I swear, my Texas accent returns the second I step off that airplane. Hell, I even start thinking with a Texas accent. Years ago, when I was an even bigger bitched up snob than I am now, it would have unnerved me slide back into that drawl! Now it just cracks me up to hear the stuff coming out of my mouth. I’m never about to do anything. Nope, immediately, I’m fixin’ to do something or go somewhere. I’m not southern enough to “bless” someone’s heart but that will probably happen after I visit Wally on family day in the Deep South. TG is from the Midwest and she thinks the accent is charming. I must admit Sophocles sounds preposterous with a Texas accent and it was at that point when we were doing this play in high school my accent began to fade. Mr. Evans, bless his heart (snerk) tried to educate it out of us.
Which brings me to the real subject of this week’s entry: my high school reunion (nice sequay, huh!)
I was one of those rare people who really enjoyed high school. Yeah, there were days I thought the world was ending. I had my heart broken in small pieces on two momentous occasions. I broke a heart. I was teased about my height, my skinny and endlessly long legs and returned the teasing in kind. Despite all of this, I loved high school and was lucky enough to make lifelong friends. So I always look forward to these ten year reunions. Each gathering has been completely different, too. Each one better than the last in some ways and I always learn something about me and people I was lucky enough to grow up with.
This year, I got to see a woman whom I never fail to remember when I see a Goth chick walking into my boys’ preppy high school. My high school was all about preps and sports and I thought the key to survival and therefore happiness was to be just. Like. Everyone. Else. She was a little bit hippy and a little bit punk and had the most amazing hair I have ever seen. When we were all ensconced in our helmet head Farrah do’s, Her hair was dressed simply and spilled down her back without a drop of AquaNet on it. When we were girls, She genuinely liked and got on with everyone because she was such an individual everyone knew her not because she was the girl who got pregnant or busted for dope or had to miss school because she lived in a terribly abusive situation but because she was just She and completely unlike the rest of us desperately trying to conform. She is still wildly original and creative. She’s also extraordinarily beautiful and appears to have been cryogenically sealed and frozen for the last thirty years because she looks absolutely the same only with a touch of experience around her eyes. What a pleasure to talk to this woman who wasn’t afraid to just be herself. Too bad I said something terribly awkward and goofy (I haven't changed, either) I hope I can fight the urge to stop one of the art chick’s at Beav’s school to tell them this story! (can you imagine the level of humiliation I would visit upon him if I did this…hmmm maybe I can use it as a threat to get him to make his bed)
Another amazing woman, shares my name but with a sharper edge. EdgierJuneCleaver has five children. Five. That’s a lot of children. I would be drunken-in-and-out-of-rehab JuneCleaver if I had five children. And while she is proud of them and has nursed one of them through the unspeakable experience of cancer, Edgier has her own life and a career. Edgier is the Quiescental Texas Girl: smooth as butter but can cut you like a knife. She also has those classic Texas looks: beautiful and leggy.
I was lucky enough to be escorted to both parties with my original Prom Date (PD). I was his galpal in high school and we spent a lot of time hanging out together. PD always had an opinion about what I was wearing or my hair. So he was better than a girlfriend because he would tell me the truth. One day, I was fussing about my hair or something stupid and he gave me--to date--the funniest compliment I’ve ever received: “June, out of all the girls I know you always look consistent [this was good, really!].” It’s the “consistent” word that cracks me up. He was a Mathy boy so variables are something he spent time thinking about.
This year neither of us had dates or spouses in tow and we talked to one another like we did all those years ago: as one another’s sounding boards and confessors. I learned to trust him when we were kids because he was the only person out of all my friends who had the courage to tell me the boy I had dated for almost two years was also seeing one of my friends. He of course shrugs it off as, “It was a question of loyalty.” Loyalty in friends goes a long way with me. So months later, we find ourselves without dates to the prom; we decided to go together. The people we wanted to go with had other dates. But I don’t remember feeling like a consolation prize because PD was one of the people I most liked spending time with. Besides that, he borrowed his brother's hot car and wasn't afraid to wear a baby blue tuxedo so we matched. And I knew he was a gentleman.
He still is a gentleman. Thankfully he left his baby blue tuxedo at home.
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