Berean Academy. Do you ever really leave High School?

 

Elbing, Kansas---Class Reunions. Most everyone has them. Do you choose to go?

When I left on this coast to coast road trip on April 12 I knew that a high school class reunion was in the works, but the date had not been announced. So when the email came proclaiming the date in July, I did the math. By all indications I would be in Kansas by then. Again, as in the other things that have happened on this trip, it all fell into place.

I was walking out the door and heading to my reunion when I suddenly got a sick feeling and a flash thought of not wanting to go. I told the friends that I was staying with, upper classmen from the same school, that I was a little nervous.  I didn’t know why but I just was.

Maybe all the bad hair in high school was still torturing me.

High School was a lifetime all wrapped into four years. But why are the marks of time not equal? Why does it always feel like a 25 year career is equal or less than the mere four years spent in high school? Is it just me or do others feel that these roots run deep.

So I did some research and in a New York Magazine article titled “Why You Truly Never Leave High School, new science on its corrosive, traumatizing effects” by Jenifer Senior, January 20, 2013 she writes, “Not everyone feels the sustained, melancholic presence of a high-school shadow self. There are some people who simply put in their four years, graduate, and that’s that. But for most of us adults, the adolescent years occupy a privileged place in our memories, which to some degree is even quantifiable: Give a grown adult a series of random prompts and cues, and odds are he or she will recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence. This phenomenon even has a name—the “reminiscence bump”—and it’s been found over and over in large population samples, with most studies suggesting that memories from the ages of 15 to 25 are most vividly retained.”

Okay, all that sounds smarter than me but it is exactly how I feel.

Now to explain, I attended Berean Academy: a very small private non-denominational Christian High School, nestled like quicksand in a heavy Mennonite community.  So besides all the jitters from the “how you turned out” aspect of life, these gatherings came with my own self-inflicted, guilt-ridden checklist. And if it didn’t come from me, I was prepared for the Mennonite mafia to push zwieback and borsht my way and evangelize me to the one, and only one, way of thinking.

But that didn't happen. In fact, at this point, the feeling of acceptance prevailed over any of my own head trips. And talking to classmates, at this point, there are plenty of ways of thinking.

The truth is, I loved my experience at Berean Academy, even though I got into a lot of trouble. Most of the trouble that some of my classmates and I got into was mainly pranks. With so many rules; dresses 3 inches above the middle of the knee, boys haircuts above the collar and the ear, chapel everyday with the dreaded girl-boy seating assignment, memorize 100 bible verses to graduate...there was a lot of room to get in trouble.   I love the religious foundation that I got, even if it gave me a few examples of what I chose not to be like and really didn’t prepare me to go outside of the immediate community...but the foundation was there.

But mostly, I love the relationships that were formed there.

There was a reason I moved as far away from Kansas as possible, it took me about five years in Florida for my subconscious to catch up with my brain: I wanted to redefine myself away from what I thought everyone thought I was---the sister of someone so much smarter and the daughter of a eccentric junkman.

Funny thing has happened on this trip and especially at the reunion. NO ONE really remembers my family as that or they do not define ME as that. And in conversations with classmates I've visited on this road trip or at the reunion, they have said things like "Well you remember my mother had mental problems", or "you remember it was because I was raised by a single parent..." No. I don't. I don't remember. I only remember them as "the funny one," "the smart one," "the athletic one," "the pretty one."

So all that time we put our "reputations" on ourselves? I could have saved a lot of time not worrying about what others thought and been a more accepting person instead of trying to be cool or funny to overcompensate with what I thought was thought.

The NEW YORK MAGAZINE article continued to say: "It turns out that just before adolescence, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that governs our ability to reason, grasp abstractions, control impulses, and self-­reflect—undergoes a huge flurry of activity, giving young adults the intellectual capacity to form an identity, to develop the notion of a self. Any cultural stimuli we are exposed to during puberty can, therefore, make more of an impression, because we’re now perceiving them discerningly and metacognitively as things to sweep into our self-concepts or reject. 'During times when your identity is in transition,' says Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist at Temple University and perhaps the country’s foremost researcher on adolescence, 'it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability'."

Graduation Night: our last prank...three girls in their swimsuits.

Years later. Same friend. Same door.

If high school is the forming of "self" some things make sense.

Our class was tiny. About 45 and there were about 35 attending the reunion counting our tradition of including anyone who moved or got kicked out during our four years because as adults, these are still important people regardless of our senior year. Our day together flew by and felt more like a sampler platter than a meal.  You just can’t get quality time with individuals when there is so much to hear.  Even though we repeat the same stories over the years, it still is never quite like hearing it from the actual participants and from all the different angles.  Plus with our memories dimming, at times it was like hearing it for the first time!

The organizers had managed to get our favorite teacher and his wife to join us from Denver. He was the teacher that had more effect on many of us by having a balance of a clear passion for teaching and an ear for listening and not leaving an impression that he was judging. In a world of holy guidance, he was the one “adult” that seemed the most human. Other favorite teachers were invited and their memories of a class riddled with trouble-makers seemed to be different or at least to them it was humorous now. Even a final confession to the past superintendent left him laughing and shaking his head saying, "no, I don't remember you causing problems."

Say what?! What seemed so huge is only in my mind? Mischief and confrontations are long forgotten with generations of others who took my place...who took our place? As much as we think we are special, we are...and we are not.

There is, and always will be a deep connection with these individuals; some that I keep up with and they know it, some that don't even know what an example or inspiration they are to me.

Our Gym. And Banquet Hall. And stage...

It’s an interesting time in life for this class. Children and grandchildren have been born. Parents have died. Marriages have failed. Marriages have grown. There have been horrible tragedies and amazing triumphs. We have lost three classmates.

I “closed down” Elbing, Kansas that night, a country town of maybe 50 homes. Several of us lingered on, talking on the sidewalk until past midnight.

Those four years were more than four years. They were four years plus 35 years of looking back at it all.