Historical Connections

[susandennis]

A year or so ago, I got a call one evening from someone 'are you the Susan Dennis who went to Bethany College?'  I was curt and abrupt and gave them the telemarketer hangup.  They called back and left several messages on my answering machine.  It was three girls I knew in college who were, apparently, having a few dozen cocktails and drunk dialing everyone they had ever met.  I did not call them back.

I've thought about that call many times.  Or rather my reaction to it.  I really have few and new even fewer ties to who I was.  I don't have any connection any more with anyone I went to school with at all.  Not under school, not high school, not college and that's fine by me.  I am mildly interested in what happened to them all.  But only in a very passive way. 

I did not like myself until I got out of college and I think that's part of not wanting a part of the people who knew me when I didn't like me.  And I'm not good friend material even when interested so why invest anything in people I'm not interested in? 

This morning I got a note from a woman I went to high school with.  The high school I went to had very very few people from my town and this woman was one of those few.  I not only went to elementary school with her but also with her husband, which it turns out, amazingly enough, she's still married to!  (A very Yikes aside.  As I recall Susan and Eddie were boyfriend and girlfriend in at least the 6th grade.  Ted Heefner and I double dated with them to the Patrol Boy's Roller Skating Party in 6th grade. - and, see, I'd really love to know what happened to Ted Heefner, but not enough to do anything to find out... but anyway... that means that Susan and Eddie (who are both 58 years old) have now been together for at least 46 fucking years.)

She says she got my email address from Marshall Chapman.  I have no clue how Marshall Chapman even has my email address.  Or why.  But... 

When you google "Susan Dennis" today, the first 8 entries are me.  (9, 11 and 12 are minimac.  and 13 is a woman I used to work for at IBM)...  BUT, until 1979, my name was Susan Schubert and if you google that, you will find a kazillion of them and none are me.

So while I've always thought I was imminently findable, I guess to those who knew me in school and for several years thereafter, this is definitely not the case. 

I will reply to Susan.  I'm not at all interested in reunions, giving money to the school or really being in the alumnae publication (which was the point of her note) but, I don't want to be mean.  And in her world, my saying no thank you would be mean.  I need to think about this. 

These people from my past (the pre-me, included) seem so far removed from now.  Mom was my last tie with the pre-me.  Now that she's gone, it's hard to relate and reconcile and I'm not sure I see any need or reason to anyway.

ramble, ramble, ramble

Comments

[angelamermaid.livejournal.com]

My Facebook experiences with former classmates are interesting. There are far too many young 'uns posting to the Moscow school group for me to sort through - and I really don't want to have anything to do with that time period. For junior high (Nova Scotia), I've run into people I knew, but haven't sent a friend request - also wanting to leave that time in the past. A friend of a friend is telling my friend he went to school with me - but he hasn't contacted me, and I can't place him in my memories.

High School - New Brunswick is a different story. To my surprise, I want to keep in touch with people from my class. There's a sense of kinship that I didn't know while we were in high school together, that has sprung up on Facebook. Turns out I went to school with some really cool people.

[susandennis]

Isn't it interesting to examine how these kinds of things feel to us? I'm actually fascinated by my own reactions to them!

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I was curt and abrupt and gave them the telemarketer hangup.

From which they immediately concluded that you were the person they remembered from college!

This post resonates a bit with me because coming up in early Septemebr is the 40-year reunion of my college chorus's summer Asian tour (between my junior and senior years). My life went in other directions after that summer, and with the single exception of a guy who showed up in the local chorus I sang with until a few years ago, I probably haven't seen or heard from any of these people in 40 years, and remember most of them just barely or not at all. I'm planning to go to the event (but am pretending not to have read the emails that were sent to people local to it for help in planning), but I'm not sure how I'll feel when I get there. It'll probably be fun, but I don't know if I'll feel any real connection.

I went to my 25th high-school reunion, and I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, but haven't been especially tempted to go to any of the ones since.

[susandennis]

You inadvertantly nailed the issue.

While today curt and abrupt and ready with the telemarketer hangup is pretty much standard susandennis - it really was not in my student days. I was very afraid of offending someone and very untrusting of my own opinion. I was such a different me.

Attending a reunion takes a lot of effort (at least it would for me) but planning one? I cannot imagine that kind of hell. You are very smart to dodge that.

[howeird]

Similar sentiments for me too. We moved cross-country when I was in the middle of 9th grade, from a JHS where I had no friends and a lot of enemies, to a place where I was able to start all over again. My older sister, OTOH, moved in the middle of her first year of HS where she had lots of friends and was poised to head up several school groups, to a place where she had to start from scratch.

She kept in touch with her "since grade school" friends. You would think that living in Israel would hide her from them, but on the contrary, a couple of times a year she tells me someone from school or our old neighborhood is coming to visit, and it's usually a name I would rather forget. Most of the time she's a good sister and doesn't hook them up with my contact info.

About 10 years ago I was visiting the folks, and the emergency brake on my car broke. I took it to the neighborhood mechanic, and we both got a kind of cruel thrill out of the fact that this was a guy I absolutely hated in high school (the only person I ever beat up, matter of fact). His thrill was in repairing my car, knowing I didn't know how to do it. My thrill was seeing that he was still a grease monkey after all these years, working for his father.

[susandennis]

That is a great story about the grease monkey. A very win win.

Hi Susan from your neighbor, Marcia, from north Pioneer Square

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's great to respond to these things. You're really just feeding the passive curiosity of lots of other people who weren't themselves back then either. You're really interesting Susan, and will be a high point among lots of others who probably live lives remarkably similar to each other.

Re: Hi Susan from your neighbor, Marcia, from north Pioneer Square

[susandennis]

Hi Marcia!! I love that you follow along and appreciate it when you let me know it's you commenting.

I did actually send her a nice note back. She said she had seen my website, and I do keep that up to date so she's current :)