Cynthia D'attilio:
CLASS OF 1983
Cranston High School EastClass of 1983
Cranston, RI
Cynthia's Story
I'm currently writing a story about a woman who goes back to the town where she grew up after twenty years and bumps into her old boy friend. (Because it's Rhode Island and you can't swing a plastic lobster bib without hitting someone you know.)
Actually, she doesn't bump into him; her dog attacks him. But that's not the point of THIS story.
The point is, I've been spending a lot of time listening to music from 1980-83, (Elvis Costello and the B52's) looking at '80's fashion (still cool) and '80's hair (not so cool) and getting into my adolescent head. Definitely a scary place.
Does anyone REALLY look at their high school years as anything but the purest form of torture? Can you really be nostalgic about the time of your life when a zit meant being a social pariah and a bad hair day meant the worst day OF YOUR LIFE?! (Gasp! The horror! My daughter is going through it now..."I can't go to school looking like this! People will NOTICE me!")
I'm having an absolutely wonderful time reliving it all. I'm having a better time making my character suffer for it. Heh.
Remember--your first crush? Remember the day that the cute guy who sat behind you in study hall said "Hi" to you in front of your friends and your heart pounded so hard you could have sworn it was going to bounce out of your chest and down the hall? Your first date? Your first "grown up" party? Too many fir...Expand for more
sts to think of; some you wish you remembered, some you're glad you can't remember. (Thank you, decaying middle aged brain cells...)
What I want to know is...what WAS the big deal about the prom, anyway? It was like a corporate Christmas party. With big hair.
The bottom line is: the things that made those times special (and memorable) were not so much the events, but the people we shared them with. (If you were a maladjusted, paranoid and painfully shy kid like me, you didn't share much, you just panicked.) It's nice that the Web affords us this opportunity to remember each other and find each other and say, "Thank you for sharing that little bit of Hell with me. We made it out alive. So...what's new?)
Personally, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that Timmy Hackett has four kids, three of them from one pregnancy. Way to go, Tim! :) Or that Melanie Flamand is a business owner AND a sailor. Who knew?
And who am I, now? I'm the wife of one (15 years of wedded bliss?), mom of three (ages 11, 8 and 21 months). I'm a horse-maid and a canine-cushion. I'm writing romantic comedies (not selling, yet, but I'm working on it), going to school for my Masters and trying hard to keep my head above water like mostly everyone else.
And I'm swinging that plastic lobster bib, looking to see who I can hit from the class of 1983. Whap! Hey! I remember YOU! :)
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