One of the websites I can’t seem to shake free of is Classmates.com, mainly because I’m unable to locate the unsubscribe button. I stopped paying my dues years ago, having lost all interest in what my former classmates might be up to, and yet the teasers keep coming. For example, according to the website, one of my classmates remembers me as “well dressed.” Another remembers me as “crush worthy.” Just goes to show how memories fog and fade over time.
Mine was the Carbon High School Class of 1961, and once a year a crew would be dispatched to whitewash the blue and white block “C” that adorned a hillside overlooking the football field. From the looks of it, that ritual has gone by the wayside and as a result the monogram has faded, same as the cerebral cortex of whoever it is who thinks I was date worthy in high school.
Nonetheless, I would very much like to find out who she (or he?) is. Unfortunately, that would require shelling out cash to renew my membership in Classmates.com, and I’m not that curious.
I was the official yearbook photographer, and I also shoot group shots at class reunions. I scan the viewfinder in search of, say, a spark in someone’s eye or pursed lips—as if to blow me a kiss. But I find no such signs, alas.
Oh, well, I’m not surprised. Fact is, I didn’t date much in high school, let alone marry a classmate—which happens to be the case with at least half the reunion couples. It was practically obligatory to marry whoever was your date at the junior prom, and if years later your spouse should pass on, you turned to your yearbook in search of the other guy who asked you out. And here I’m assuming it’s the widow conducting the search, because husbands where I come from have a tendency to croak first. So, were I unmarried, or a widower, I imagine my phone would be ringing off the hook right now. And yes, I do still have a landline.
Now and again my wife will catch me staring at my silent desk phone, and I imagine she must wonder why. Why, for example, haven’t I upgraded to a cell phone with caller I.D., so I wouldn’t end up taking calls from opportunistic scammers?