Perspective

In seventh grade, I stopped smiling.

I know this not from memory, but from interviewing my parents. Right before I turned twenty-eight, five days before my birthday, in fact, I went through a very painful break up. Actually, I was cheated on, then dumped. It was the worst period of my life, and the experience shattered my psyche like glass; my thoughts scattered into a thousand unfocused tangents I could not maintain a grasp on. To regain clarity, I began seeing a therapist who suggested I talk to my family about the childhood I lived, yet did not remember. She rightly realized that my pain was centered deeper than a breakup, and wanted to find its source.

The experience was amazingly odd. Talking to my parents about my life was like having a movie described to me. The only problem was, I had actually seen the movie. I lived my childhood. I just had no recollection of it.

My parents had been divorced for several years at the time I was in therapy, and were at the height of their verbal assaults on one another. "Your father..." my mother would begin a sentence. "Let me tell you something about your mother," my dad would randomly insert into a conversation. They agreed on nothing, so when in separate moments both wistfully turned their head aside and looked into the distance, and said, "In the seventh grade, you stopped smiling," I took notice.

At the start of that school year, I moved to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. My father had accepted a job outside of Milwaukee, and instead of living there, he wanted to commute from the town of his own youth. Unresolved issues from childhood traumas had him choose the city, though it would be years before he could look back on this decision and see that.

I also say I moved, because that's what happened. Due to the start date on my father's job and the closing on the house in Appleton, a decision needed to be made: I could either head to Oconomowoc ahead of the family, live with my paternal grandmother Evelyn for three weeks and start the school year with all the other kids, or I could attend school in Appleton for three weeks and then transfer.

My parents believed if I showed up on day one, it would make the transition easier, and that I would make friends more quickly. They thought I could avoid being shut out of school cliques, and decided I would move ahead of the family.

While this is sound reasoning on paper, Oconomowoc was a very small town. It was the kind of town that feared the outside world. Citizens supported god, guns, and the Republican Party, and though they had little interest in facts or world news, people knew what felt morally right, which is all that mattered. In that environment, all cliques had been determined long before Junior High. Though I started seventh grade on day one, I was already an outsider. I hadn't come up in the grade schools with everyone else, and was therefore unknown. Add to that fact Oconomowoc was a town founded on wealth, and the school was divided by the elites with money, and those without or "not enough;" middle class in Oconomowoc was considered peasant status by some. The fact I was a lone child living with an octogenarian did not help my standing, even though it was a temporary situation.

I was already accustomed to spending time at my grandmother Evelyn's house. Several years earlier, when my parents had separated and I lived with my father in Milwaukee, he would put me on a bus and send me to her on weekends I didn't visit my mother. As an adult, I once talked to my dad about this. I had no real memory of my rides, yet sometimes had flashes in my mind of sitting alone, looking out a window and nervously counting stops so I wouldn't get off early. I asked my dad if I had ever been on a bus, and he said he had no recollection of it. I brought the same question to my mom, who immediately grew somber. As Oconomowoc is only forty-five miles from Milwaukee, when dad had to work weekends and couldn't find anyone to tend to me, he would put me on a Greyhound and send me off to his mother's house for care. I would sit behind the driver, a child of six, and ride for several hours and through numerous stops from city to city. Like Linus, I carried a protective blanket and apparently hugged it tightly to my chest the whole ride. Evelyn told my mother it broke break her heart every time she met me at the station. I'd get off the bus and look frightened and lost, clutching the blanket as if a protective amulet. A child among a sea of adults, much less the cross section of society that uses Greyhound, is a grooming ground for anxiety to a small child.

After the three-week layover at my grandmother's, my family arrived and I was able to join them in our new home. As embarrassed as I was living with a grandparent, I quickly saw that arriving in town early was indeed the better option; my sister Amanda started her school year three weeks late, and was ostracized from the outset.

While "small town values" may play every election cycle, in reality small town generally means small mind. The people were isolationists, and unwelcoming to the outside world. Amanda never found a crowd to run with, and eventually had to transfer schools in an attempt to leave the stress of spending her days friendless and surrounded by judgmental, ostracizing eyes.

I fared better, if only because I was older and in a larger school. Though there were several elementary schools in the district, they all flowed into one junior and senior high. While my sister was secluded, I swam in a larger pond. Fortunately, there are always more "average" kids in any school than there are popular kids, and they are usually more welcoming to people joining their ranks than the popular crowd.

If I had thought Appleton overrun with racist attitudes, I hadn't seen anything yet. Some students spoke openly of the Ku Klux Klan, and their parents supposed involvement with it. Whether this was youthful ignorance or real I do not know, but whispers of secret meetings in cornfields were often within earshot.

I do remember a moment in 1988, my senior year, when I attended the homecoming football game with several classmates. By then I'd lived in the town six years and had made a few friends. Several were among the crowd I was walking with, while others in the clique were those I knew by reputation, but not friendship. High school cliques sometimes play like a Venn Diagram. You have your A friends, your B friends, and then a spattering of crossover between them. I was generally a crossover in Oconomowoc; I didn't exactly run with, or fit into, any specific crowd.

The rival team that night drew a healthy following, a handful of which were African-Americans. This seemed to set off a lynch-mob mentality among some of those I was near, and heated discussions of going over and "gettin'" or "teachin' the niggers a lesson" was spewed out like venom. At some point, alternately disgusted and irritated, I tossed out the comment, "Jesus Christ, this isn't fucking Howard Beach, let it go."

(Howard Beach was famous at the time for having had a group of angry white teens attack several African-American men whose car stalled in the neighborhood. One man was killed.)

Dumbfounded stares faced me, though to this day I'm not sure if it is because I didn't join in on the little hate-fest, or because I referenced an event that had made national news for several months the previous year. For whatever reason, whether I confused them into inaction or they were all bluster from the start, no rumble (or lynching) occurred that night.

The neighborhood I lived in was on the far reaches of the city limits. We technically had an Oconomowoc address, but lived ten minutes from town. When I lived there, it was peacefully under-developed, with vacant lots both next to and across from our house.

One of the first things I noticed was a family down the road. They had a boy a year or two younger than me, and more importantly a pool in their back yard. Lacking such an amenity at my own residence, I wanted to befriend the boy for two selfish reasons: one, I had no friends. Two, he had a pool.

Whether he suspected being used by me or whether I just didn't fit in with the family I do not know, but I remember being very unwelcome at both the house and in the cooling waters of the aquatic playground they owned. Today my memories suggest it was a little of each; the mother of the household was an overbearing tank of a woman, and she seemed to think her mission in life was to protect her son at all costs. Thinking back, I don't remember him having many friends, either.

Spurned and angered by the rejection, I revenged my honor the only way a seventh grader could. For several weeks, I urinated into several two-liter soda bottles until I had filled them all. One night, under cover of darkness, I stole away to the forbidden pool and emptied my waste into it. The next day, watching the family splash about, I smiled a wide smile. Even then I knew that chlorine and chemicals probably killed any personal germs I happened to pour in, but I still felt I had done my karmic duty in a way. "What goes around, comes around" is a popular phrase, and that day I was my own come around.

My first friend in Oconomowoc was Alan Munkwitz. His stereotype of living on the wrong side of the tracks cut so close to home he actually lived on the tracks; they ran right past the border of his back yard. Even as child, I surmised having locomotives disrupt your days and nights did not a decent property value create.

Alan welcomed me in friendship, and was in fact the person who introduced me to alcohol. As luck would have it, my first experience left me with little desire to drink again for years. Alan somehow procured a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps, and we proceeded to down it as fast as possible. Disgusting, yes, but interesting when the eventual sickness overcame our tiny bodies; rarely have I ever thrown up so much while the thought, "but my breath is so minty fresh!" ran through my head.

Alan and I drifted apart within a year or so; where I didn't enjoy the effect alcohol and other drugs had on my system, Alan did, and progressed down a path of experimentation I didn't want to follow. Economic status attaches itself to social stigma, and Alan was looked at as a “dirtball,” as they were called back then. Whether or not this led to his troubles with liquor and the law I do not know, but the path he stumbled down was one filled with blackouts and bloodshot eyes.

We finally reconnected in our senior year of high school. Alan was starting to screw his head on straight, sober up and wanted nothing more than to graduate with everyone else come spring. We ended up in chemistry class together, and every day had exchanges where I'd bust his determined balls.

"I'm gonna do it," Alan would state. "I'm gonna graduate."

“Not gonna happen,” I'd say with a laugh. “You’ll never make it.”

(Male bonding often involves the best in negative reinforcement.)

One night, as happens in rural areas, Alan was driving down a long country road after work when another vehicle crossed the yellow line of lane and smashed into Alan's car.

He was killed immediately.

The next day, my chemistry class had an empty desk, and the air was uneasy. The desk was like a magnet. All eyes were drawn to it, all thoughts on the boy who had been sitting in it just yesterday.

In the middle of our session, the p.a. system sparked to life and called for a moment of silence to honor Alan. Many around me squirmed uncomfortably, as if in the presence of a ghost. Before I knew what was happening, I opened my mouth.

“Well,” I offered, causing several people to jump. “I told him he wouldn’t graduate.”

I have been called a very dark comic, which I am fine with. I believe it is in our bleakest moments we need a little levity.

* * *

My parents began sleeping in separate bedrooms. By this point in their marriage, each had colored a bit outside the lines of their wedding vows. Who did what first doesn't interest me much, but the events led to a coldness between them, and that was a presence known in the house even without their acknowledging any problems. The guise they erected to sell the sleeping scenario to Amanda and I was that they kept separate hours: mom had to get up early, dad had to stay up late, so it made nothing but sense to sleep apart.

I began disassociating myself from my family, and my bedroom became an isolationist's paradise. I arranged the furniture so that even within the walls of my bedroom, there was a separate layer of protection. I placed my bed very close to the door, creating a narrow space for entry. At the foot of the bed, I placed my dresser not with its back to the wall, as is custom, but perpendicular to it. The back of the dresser faced the door, so as you entered my room you were then blocked. Using those two items, I created in essence a wall that divided the room in two; behind it, I placed my desk. To get to my desk you would have to either crawl over my bed or shove the dresser aside. I know few parents interested in such gymnastics, and was thus left to my own devices whenever I needed to escape while still at home. As an adult, I can look back on my home life and draw the definite parallel between unhappiness there and my actions at school; I was simply young, confused, and angry. So if I arrived in Oconomowoc surly, it only got worse as my first year in town progressed.

At school, I battled daily with the band teacher, George Werve. I cannot recall what started it all, but there was friction between us and I refused to back down when confronted. Eventually, my behavior landed me an entire semester's detention. An administrator named Charlotte Hall grew so tired of dealing with me she put an end to my lunch period. Every day I brown bagged it to the school office, where I sat in a side room and ate in silence. Char may have thought she was punishing me, but in reality I couldn't have cared in the least; I had no friends, and therefore no one to eat with. Sitting in the office may have looked like torture, but to me it was escape. Better to eat apart from everyone, than to do so alone while in a cafeteria full of happy children.

Eighth and ninth grades were a blur to me; I made a few friends, but again, ate alone if we ended up on separate lunch hours. My maternal grandmother, Elaine, lost her husband--a man I don't remember at all--and moved to Oconomowoc to be closer to her daughter. She rented an apartment directly across the street from the Junior High and on the same side of the street as the Senior High, so every day until my senior year I made my way to her house for lunch. Somehow, going to a grandmother's house for lunch was much less embarrassing than having to live with one.

The most important year of my youth would probably be 1984. That summer I was thirteen, and two bands entered my consciousness in ways that would forever alter me. Metallica released the album "Ride The Lightning," while Slayer offered up "Haunting The Chapel." My friend (and future Best Man) Brian Jones brought Metallica to my attention, and of all people, my father introduced me to Slayer.

College radio is an eclectic creation, where students create their own programming and offer it to the public. It's the only place on any radio dial you can hear Miles Davis one hour, and then German Industrial Techno-Polka the next. My dad has always had a fetishists obsession with swing bands, and would record a jazz program played on a somewhat-local college radio station; though we lived sixty miles from the transmitter, our receiver was able to pick up a decent signal. My dad happened to tune in early once, and heard an interesting noise emitting from his speakers. He called me into the room, and I was transfixed. I'd never heard anything like it before, and the simplest way to describe the sound would be to say power was exiting the speakers. Raw power, in the form of music.

I called the college and asked what the hell I was listening to, and the bright-voiced and bubbly girl told me the wonders of the band Slayer. I was hearing "Chemical Warfare."

The discovery of Heavy Metal was probably both my salvation and undoing, when it came to my teen years. Like a gang, the metal community offered me a place to fit in and surround myself with like-minded miscreants. Confused youth who felt like outsiders joined the metal movement to feel the sense of family they didn't get at home. Attending a concert was a wonderful form of cathartic release; body slamming in a mosh pit released all aggression in a safe and controlled manner, and you went home cleansed. Though a pit might look violent from the outside, in the 1980's all was organized inside one. If you fell, hands immediately lifted you back up. No one was interested in damaging anyone else, which all unfortunately changed in the 1990's. As I was leaving metal behind, what had started as a movement for confused youth transformed into a violent culture, with skinheads showing up at concerts and setting out to inflict pain using balled fists and steel-toed shoes. Everything in life is cyclical, though, and soon enough Nirvana would arrive to give teen angst another safe outlet for it's youthful confusion.

Only now do I understand the simple diagnosis of psyche I held back then, that of a typical teenager. I craved attention and acceptance, yet only wanted it on my own terms. I did not want to dress like everyone else, vote like everyone else, or think like everyone else. In response or reactionary mode, I began wearing black t-shirts, torn jeans, and long hair. In classic silly psychosis, I began pushing people away, yet at the same time angrily wondered why they weren't embracing me. In my unwelcoming small town, instead of working to break the social barrier, I lashed out at it. When everyone else was listening to the bubble gum rock of Bon Jovi, I was supporting the hardcore likes of Exodus. My favorite bands sang about dark topics, such as Satanism. While I had no interest in the occult or devil worship, the fact I wore the shirt of a band who sang songs about it was enough to scare the conservative segments of society that thrived in Oconomowoc. The more I altered my appearance from the norm, the more I was an outcast. The more I was an outcast, the angrier I got and further isolated myself. It was a vicious cycle very typical to that of the average teen, and I unfortunately carried the anger into my twenties.

I do have happy memories of Oconomowoc; it wasn't all "woe is me" bitching and feelings of persecution. Though I remained a virgin until college, I was at least an aural witness to a friend's deflowering.

One thing no adult should ever do is entrust a teenager with the keys to their house. It doesn't matter how straight-laced the child is, it's all an act. When given William Wallace's freedom, teens act as irresponsibly as possible.

A neighbor of a friend of mine went out of town often. When this happened, my friend was told to bring the mail in, water the plants and turn the lights on and off at night, that the house would not be a target for thieves. Naturally, we used the adult-free zone as a party house. People would be called, beers would be marked, and merriment had.

As beer was difficult to come by, everyone marked beer cans with their initials. If you ran out early, you had to barter or buy more from your friends. Once, returning to the scene of the crime several months after our previous mixer, my friend Mark looked in the fridge and pulled a beer can from the back. On top were two letters, DP, for "Dan Parker." No Marine he, Dan had left one behind, and it apparently sat in the back of the family's refrigerator for months waiting to be claimed. Had they found it, I'm sure it would have been the end of our partying ways: "Honey, why does one of our beers have initials written on it in permanent marker?"

For one such gathering, we were lucky enough to attract some of the fairer gender. Most of our parties were sadly all male, making the attendance of women quite the treat. At some point of intoxication, the possibility of strip poker was tossed out, and the girls accepted the proposal. To a point, that is. There's no honorable way to put this, so I'll just out and say: we boys cheated. Everyone was drunk, so it was fairly easy to distract whoever needed distracting in order to win a hand. Well, the women weren't stupid, but they were shy, and when each came to the point a key article of clothing needed to be shed, they demurred and departed the game.

We booed, but what could we do?

Only one brave lass remained playing, and she did so only because she had a crush on another member within the circle. She also entered the game with a plan: when it was her turn to start exposing flesh, she said she would do so, but only alone with her object of desire. Again, we booed in protest, but we weren't about to cock-block a buddy. Everyone slumped their shoulders and accepted the loss. But, being young, drunk and stupid, several of us gathered together our own idea.

We made our way to the master bedroom before the burgeoning couple could, and someone stole into the closet while I whisked myself under the bed. Once there, I wondered how I thought I was going to get a glimpse of bare breasts from such a stupid vantage point, but a mind drenched in alcohol rarely makes sound decisions.

The chosen one and his girl entered the bedroom, talked, kissed, and climbed onto the mattress. I lay underneath it all, cursing my stupidity.

Mr. closet couldn't contain himself, and after several minutes of stifled giggles burst both into laughter and the room. The girl shrieked, Casanova laughed, and the drunken intruder stumbled away the best he could.

Now I was alone among the happenings.

The couple resumed kissing, and after a few minutes, as clothes started hitting the floor next to the bed (and quite near my head), I realized something big was about to occur. Naturally, I started giggling, but silently so. Mustering up all the Kill Bill short-range power punch I could, I began messing with the enraptured couple. As their rhythm started, I shoved up on the bed with as much force as possible, bouncing it off its frame and allowing it to slam down again.

One of the most-funny quotes I've ever heard in my life followed. "I think someone's in here with us," the girl stated.

No shit?

Somehow, using drunken reasoning like "I'm kind of inside you right now," my friend convinced her they were as alone as Tiffany and they continued their trip into adulthood.

Meanwhile, I continued being an ass. I pushed on the bed, I pulled on the sides of the sheets, I did everything I could to be a jerk. But even I have limits. My friend was having sex, the oft dreamed of event of life for a teen, and I was ruining it for him. To allow him to finish in peace, I shimmied out from under the bed, stood, and left. To my credit, I didn't look back, either; I didn't want to see his lilywhite ass doing any gyrating. I did toss out one final giggle, though, saying in a high-pitched, mocking voice, "I think someone's in here with us!"

Oh, and for the record, no, no one washed any sheets when all was said and done. I believe the bed was re-made, but that was the closest they came to cleaning. The happy couple returning to their home after a nice vacation? They got to sleep in the remnants of teen sex sweat. How very crustilicious.

Another happy memory from back in the day was the Burger King parking lot on Friday nights. With nothing to do but cruise the short strip the town had, kids would end up in several parking lots to sit, smoke, and try to look tough while only succeeding in looking bored. A typical evening involved a combination of myself, Ed Weirzbicki and Mark Koch, plus any extra person we might be hanging out with. One night, I was crammed into the back seat with Tom M., when a knock came to the window. Outside was an attractive girl from another town. Ed was in the front, so he greeted the most polite, petite thing you'd ever seen who had come a rapping.

She leaned in, and said to Ed, "could you please pull your seat forward?" which he did. She then leaned in across me and said, "Hi, could you lean back a little please? Thanks." I gave her access, and what came next was quite unexpected. The polite, kind girl let loose a series of sailor-like swear words and started beating the unholy hell out of Tom. Added to the hilarity of the juxtaposition, she kept her civil nature going during the assault, alternately berating Tom, then asking Ed or I for more space quite politely: "YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE! GET OUT OF THE CAR! I'LL FUCKING--I'm not hitting you, am I? Could you lean back a little further? Thanks--KILL YOU! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR YOU FUCKING, FUCKING ASSHOLE!"

She dragged Tom out of the car by his hair and preceded to slap, punch and kick him in the sac until he could take no more. I believe once he was lying on the ground, she actually spit on him before leaving. Maybe she threw food or a drink too, that I cannot recall. Naturally, the rest of us stood around both stunned and amused; there is little in life more funny than watching a friend of yours get his ass handed to him by a random woman.

Turns out, Tom had attempted his teenage best to perform on her orally, but was so disgusted by the yeast infection he found when he got to the holy hole he threw up right then and there. She had been laying back, eyes closed and ready for the generated warmth an orgasm offers, and instead was painted upon by his half-digested dinner. As if that wasn't enough, Tom then spread word of the infection far and wide, giving her a reputation she didn't quite appreciate. The beating was a just response, I suppose.

The good times aside, after graduation I spent very little time in Oconomowoc. I rarely visited, and skipped my five, ten and fifteen year reunions. Age, understanding and distance, however, brought me to attend the twenty. A few months before that milestone, I stumbled across my senior yearbook. It was the only one I bought, and I almost forwent that purchase, too. I discovered the yearbook while in my mom's basement searching for other items, and looking it over is actually what kept me away from the previous gatherings. I would get an invite, pick up the yearbook, ancient resentments would bubble up to the surface and I would take a pass on seeing my old classmates. Perusing the pages before the twenty gave slight hints it could do the same once more, but after so much time had passed, most of the names and faces meant very little to me.

In high school, I watched the rarified air the popular breathed in, and it all seemed so real and significant. After two decades, those who were deemed gods above mere mortals like me were disappeared from places of importance. Athletic heroes lionized by female eyes were never propelled into the elite arena of professional sports, and many weren't even able to cut it at the college level. They had been enormous fish in a very small pond, but once they left that realm of safety, reality sent stars into their eyes with a quick jab to the nose, not the approval of success. It made me very happy my life didn't peak in high school, as happens to some.

I found it odd, though, that even looking over the snapshots after so many years I could still feel a tinge of the stings that once upset me. Little nothings, like having only two pictures in the whole yearbook. I have the standard listing photo, and one candid shot. The candid was from something the administration called "Harmony Week." In a typical "We have no idea how to relate to kids" manner, the faculty dreamed up a melding week where students from all social rings and teachers were to express togetherness. On Monday, everyone received special t-shirts with the word "Harmony" on them. We were told to wear the shirt on Friday, when everyone would participate in an all-school picture to be taken on the football bleachers. Given I received the shirt several days in advance, I figured I had to alter mine slightly. I took it home, bought an iron on decal, and created the universal "anti" sign--a circle with a line through it. I placed it over the word "Harmony," creating an adverse effect to the administrations idea. When I wore it Friday, students giggled and pointed, and teachers frowned and murmured. Someone took a shot of me wearing it in study hall, and somehow it was cleared to go the distance in the yearbook.

While two photos are the complete yearbook documentation of my high school existence, every other page is filled with the pledge kids for "Up With People." Today, the number of times I'm in my yearbook means nothing to me. Back then, it made me feel like a friendless failure. There are, however, two notable omissions the yearbook staff made, most likely because each did the most unspeakable of acts: showed the school up.

The first exclusion involved success. I was in a heavy metal cover band; our name was Euthanasia. I had researched the topic for speech class and the topic and name seemed cool. We covered songs by Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and played them very well. Towards the end of my senior year, we got permission to perform with another band in the upper gym. I took flyers to every school within an hour radius of Oconomowoc and promoted the hell out of the concert. When all was said and done, around 700 people attended, and a decent chunk of that number came from outside our district. In my promotion, I capitalized on that ever-present plight of the small town teenager: there's nothing better to do, so come to Oconomowoc and rock out! The concert was better attended than a half-dozen school sponsored events, and pulled in more cash than several of them combined. Naturally, the concert was not mentioned in the end of year wrap up, while each failed school idea--Winter Carnival! Madrigal Dance!--received its own display page in honor and memory.

The concert, for the record, was also my first moment of clever, shrewd (or conniving) thought. In researching my future show, I attended a performance several months beforehand and learned something very important. Taking the information into my own show, I approached a member of the other band on the bill and schemed my way into success.

"Hey man," I said. "Just so there's no bullshit about anything, if you guys wanna headline, we'll be your opening act."

"Cool!" my mark said, falling for it.

The night of the show, everything happened exactly as I had seen several months earlier: Euthanasia went up to a full house. In the 20-minute intermission between acts, the audience left to go out and get drunk. Of course they did; it's what teenagers do. The second band went up to about 40 of their closest friends and I feigned ignorance. Golly! Who knew this would happen?

A quick side note involving the speech class mentioned earlier: when choosing a topic for persuasion, I discovered, as said, euthanasia. I was immediately interested in the pro side, believing those with terminal illness should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to live within the confines of a hospital bed or to die with some form of grace and dignity. I researched the topic diligently, and presented my discoveries to my classmates. I think I scored well.

At the end of the year, everyone was allowed to choose both a style and topic for their final speech. A bright-eyed young classmate I won't name decided he had been so offended by my words, he gave an anti-euthanasia delivery as his closing counter.

To this day, I wish I had heckled him. Mocked his speech for what it was, emotionally trite nonsense. The lecture amounted to nothing more than him standing in front of the class, breaking down in tears and openly weeping while saying, "I love my grandpa, and I don't want anyone to kill him."

I didn't have it entirely figured out then, but this was a shining example of the small-town attempt of understanding a complex problem. If you couldn't think rationally, you did so emotionally. Instead of listening to what I had said about personal choice, he countered with crazed murderers storming hospices and dragging the elderly out of their beds. The sad part is, people like that grow up to be not just voters, but usually single-issue ones. "Well, this person might have a better economic policy, but I don't like his stance on gay marriage, and my life is so pathetic I have to worry about what two people do in the privacy of their own bedroom." But I digress.

The other item unmentioned by the yearbook was one I expected to go unreported, as there was no way it was going to be promoted or even acknowledged. Bored with the traditional school newspaper, several students created an underground paper, "Banzai," which was humor based. After the first issue, I was lucky enough to be approached by its creator, a quiet boy by the name of Sean. He asked if I wanted in, and did I ever.

Was what we put out genius? Of course not. It was lowbrow, teenage humor, and therefore exceedingly popular. We satirized the easy targets of any high school--the adulterous teacher, the administrator rumored to have had a facelift--as well as the student council and the student newspaper, the latter of which went on to honor us with an editorial on how funny we weren't. The more we wrote, the more people spoke out in anticipation of the next copy. To remain anonymous and not get in trouble, we would "release" copies by leaving them stacked in bathrooms between classes. They would then be discovered and passed around. The first couple issues had some people taking a copy, while others would simply ignore them. Before long, though, students making the initial discovery of a new issue would hoard the whole pile and give them to friends, leaving the unlucky in the lurch. As we had no budget, we weren't making very many of the Xeroxed little buggers, and the more popular Banzai became, the more valuable an issue became.

What's funny is, though only the people actually in on the production knew I was a part of it, I was a suspected ringleader from the start. Such was the reputation I had with the administration. Char Hall, my wonder-love from seventh grade, was promoted to high school supervision, and I immediately came under watch of her scrutiny. I was called in for questioning, and was told "all eyes" were on me. Which, I hate to say, I was used to. I was lucky enough to be suspected any time anything out of the ordinary happened on school grounds. Only once was I was actually guilty of the offense they accused me of.

In tenth grade, the school sponsored "Flower Day." You could buy a rose and send it to anyone you wanted, including faculty. That year, I was not to large a fan of my English teacher, so I dictated a little "Holy-Christ-are-you-awful" note to my friend Mike, and he sent it to my teacher without signing any name. That evening, a town detective arrived at my front door to give me a stern little lecture. In his words, they had done a "handwriting analysis," and it was determined with conclusive proof I had written the awful note that had so traumatized the teacher. I wasn't in trouble, but I was being warned to straighten up.

I may have been young, but I've never been entirely clueless. I knew the reason I wasn't in trouble is because they had nothing on me. At the same time, I couldn't defend my innocence by saying, "You're full of shit. I know the handwriting doesn't match, because I had my friend Mike write the note just in case something like this was to happen."

The funny thing is, aside from wearing torn jeans and wearing black t-shirts, there was almost no reason for me to have the reputation I did. I didn't fight, do drugs, vandalize or even skip much class until my senior year. That flower aside, I pretty much stayed out of everyone's way. It all traces back to my seventh grade battles with the band teacher. I was branded then, and in a small town, that was enough. I was so disliked by the administration that one assistant principal actually told me he saw jail time in my future. To repeat, I didn't fight, do drugs vandalize school property or do anything really outside the scope of normal teenage behavior, but was still looked at as someone who would probably go to jail. I was John Bender, simply because I dressed the part.

What's sad is, in my senior year, I eventually started acting the way many people already saw me. I still didn't drink much, maybe four times the whole year, and I didn't do drugs other than trying pot once, but I began ditching class as often as possible. I was probably more a punk in my final year of high school than at any time previous, but by then, it was almost a knee-jerk reaction. "If you're going to treat me this way, then I'm going to act out so I deserve it."

Anyway, returning to Banzai, many with power in like only to leave behind a happy, shiny history, so no mention of the raucous little newspaper was given in the yearbook. Thing is, though I was looking for credit for my actions at the time, I have to admit the memories are all that is important anymore. The concert was a damn good time, regardless of recognition. Banzai was done more out of boredom than for the history books. In a delicious turn of irony, though swept under the rug by "proper" students in charge of the school legacy, several issues were time-capsuled for the twentieth reunion. In the end, the students who actually enjoyed Banzai honored it.

The reunion in my eyes was a reminder of humanity and humility. No one was a God anymore; time had ravaged the few who might have believed they once were. Everyone had become adults; some got married, and some focused on careers. Some got divorced, while others had children of their own. A few hadn't changed much, but their arrogance or ignorance didn't faze me anymore. Instead, I felt a sort of pity. A little for them, and a little for society. There's something sad in seeing someone who never moved more than 90 miles from the place of their birth, who never traveled or got to experience a different culture. They maintain the same small town small mindedness they grew up with, believing their idealized and isolated vision of the world is better than the real one.

Ignorance can also be willful; Oconomowoc had a lot of wealth when I lived there, and it was interesting to observe those children of privilege as adults. Most had low empathy levels, and addressed social problems with a sense of, "Life is pretty good, I don't understand why people complain about so much." They felt having been born into money meant they somehow earned it.

Catching up after twenty years was quite therapeutic; almost every old resentment I had ever held melted away immediately. I got to speak with people who had only been on the periphery of my awareness in school, and found many life stories entirely enthralling. Many had gone through the exact same emotions, fears and anxieties I had; many had felt as isolated and awkward as I had. Some had even skipped the same reunions as I, for the very same reasons.

The stimulus overloaded my senses; there were so many faces and names and nowhere near enough time to honor each person with a conversation. Some I have stayed in touch with since that evening, while others dissipated once again.

Out of everyone in my graduating class, there was only one person I felt I could do without talking to, even twenty years later. Of all my antipathies, I wondered how many I had invented; who had I disliked simply because I thought they disliked me, and vice-versa? But regarding this one man, I couldn't escape the lingering feeling he was a douchebag, even if I couldn't remember a single specific reason why. I figured if I didn't bump into him, I would be entirely OK with that. What follows should be all too obvious.

I arrived at the reunion a few minutes before everyone was sitting down to dinner, where Brian Jones had saved my fiancée and I seats at his table. I pulled my chair out, sat down and scooted my butt in, and directly across from me was the one person I wasn't interested in seeing.

He didn't acknowledge me, so I didn't acknowledge him, but I did stare intently and attempt to second-guess my emotions. Why did I not like him? Was I inventing an anger I should just let go? It did make me smile to see he was going bald in the worst of ways; his forehead had expanded to the crown of his head, and he was desperately holding on to his few remaining wisps of hair.

I focused on him through both the welcoming toast and opening pleasantries. I searched my memory for any negative he had done to me, and came up blank. Then, the house lights lowered. The reunion committee announced the start of a slideshow, one to honor classmates who had passed from this world into the next. Pictures of faces I once knew appeared, aged, and then disappeared forever. Each had a story of life, family and loss.

Mere moments into the presentation, my nemesis leaned in to the person sitting next to him, and began talking: "So, this morning was great. I shot under par on hole thirteen..."

And it hit me.

That's why I didn't like him.

He was a douchebag.

He had always been a douchebag, was still a douchebag, and will probably always be a douchebag.

Relief comes in many forms, and remembering why I had unkind thoughts about a fellow human being was as tasty as a cool drink of water on a hot summer day.

As of right now, I have no plans to attend another reunion. Despite the fact I genuinely enjoyed myself at the twenty, one gathering might have been enough. But you know what? If I ever hear that the awkwardly balding douchebag died? He who felt the need to discuss his golf game during our classmate's wake? Well then, I might have to reconsider. Maybe I'll go just to talk about some mundane aspect of my life during his slideshow. Hell, maybe I'll even Bluto Blutarsky it up and cough "Asshole!" as his picture passes across the screen.

And I will smile as I do so.