Eric Fristad:
CLASS OF 1962
Polytechnic High SchoolClass of 1962
Riverside, CA
Polytechnic High SchoolClass of 1962
Riverside, CA
Central Junior High SchoolClass of 1959
Riverside, CA
Magnolia Elementary SchoolClass of 1956
Riverside, CA
Eric's Story
[Yet another revision as of late February 2020, please jump towards the end of this verbage.] Revision in March of 2019. Did I really get to be 74 years old? Plus (like the robotic voice intones in Thunderball) "... and count--ting" An explanation, peeps. My Classmates Story Page here offers a few more words about my life stuff. I still refuse to make a list--you know, the "I lived in Magnolia Center area of Riverside for...years and after I graduated ... I went ... then joined the Army ... married ... and we had children ... and grandchildren ... three dogs and a gerbil" sort of thing. That's probably dull to absorb or even glance at, and I wouldn't lay my own plodding dailies on anybody else.
Put in a more soap-box manner, what any of us has physically done all these years is less vital, really, than what we have been processing and how we've been growing. And has that any of stuff touched others? Blessed them, I mean. It's way harder for us to verbalize after these years, yes, but it is worth the bother because it may really give hope to our peers who have themselves arrived this moment in time on the accelerating train from THAT (circa early '60s) moment in time.
Removing an earlier essay from this place with a click (zap!) still calls up regret in me, though a tiny bit, for relationships that never quite got started, or wandered afar and never got retrieved, or began but never got pursued. Because many of us never made the effort, didn't bother to risk being walked away from--analogous to the uber-cute girls (you know who you are) who unless you were among the blessed, at year's end always began their yearbook-signature notation with the disclaimer "I don't really know you ...."
I did go to the multi-class reunion in September of 2016. It was of course less personal for many of us, spread thinner as it was by the mortality rearing up among us, made up for only partly by the attendance-boosting spread in graduation years. The thing is, I think the reason I enjoyed it more (I did, much more), was that there was less posturing there, than at my 20th or 30th. There seemed fewer people desperate to be reaffirmed by people whose every glance affirmed they were cool or groovy or somesuch. But at the 2016 event many there any were that I observed quietly but profoundly conveying to those up-close ones, "You mattered then and you matter now."
Nobody in any way counting and comparing wrinkles. Everyone aware that our real (vital, important) selves are truly as smooth-skinned as that grandchild we have held and marveled over of late. Good times.
Another adventure is out on our horizon this autumn -- Europe for some weeks. If any friends may be curious about that, and what this 75 year old is in for, here's a site to bookmark. What's there now is narrative and photos outlining our intended stuff; when it actually begins mid-October, that's the time to check back as the spirit moves. I do intend to keep blog words and pics very current, and to answe...Expand for more
r email at least in context of subsequent entries. So here is the street, TheyreGoingAgain followed by com with a dot between. I'd love to hear by email from there (bottom of each page connects) ... I am outta CM membership in early March.
Thinking about it that way, what are the economies of nearly a hundred bucks to register, plus transport round-trip, plus lodging -- for a so-so dinner and hugs and maybe a peck on the cheek, a few hours spent getting comfortable amongst others who used to be young? Being thankful all the while for the invention of picture-name tags we can discreetly glance at -- our spotty memory of faces a little hard on our own ego?
Laughing but in a very sad way.
I mentioned money up there. My strongly held theory is this: relationships are arguably the most worthy things that exist, that the importance of dollar amounts should diminish with the chance to confront such moments. Because authentic friends want several things: Time. Thoughtfulness. Imagination. Long suffering. Yes, and intercession sometimes. Parking one's emotional hiney in somebody else's heart-neighborhood demands some really costly stuff that isn't likely to get dispensed by visits to social websites, whether furtive or with anonymous abandon. It wants, as I say, investing oneself up close.
Soooo. Yet another reunion-option weekend inches towards us. Actually it's beginning to lurch in our direction. Planning it certainly has begun impressively. I know and commend many of the people who are earnestly pouring their hearts into it. (Yes, Virginia, actually our real life peers doing the work/exercising their own passion in pursuit of the thing.) A slightly younger crowd overall than the November 2016 thing, true, but the stated point of the overarching 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation is to give scholarship assistance to today's H.S. graduates. The stated theme is Paying It Forward.
I believe that possible Do Overs or, at the least Do Betters, can be had right up 'til our final earthly breath. Of course there's the obvious corollary which of course is this: not a single Do Over will be available thereafter. So let's keep working on this stuff, okay? Maybe, it's just a remote chance, but perhaps that recently renewed, irreplaceable friend from my Poly '60s bunch will be met, will get touched, may even be interested/interesting enough to visit with into the wee hours. Sometime. While I wouldn't hold my breath indefinitely on that possibility, my lung capacity is still pretty ample, so I shall try to be hopeful.
Right now taking an internal inventory, the odd, personal change observed is this, that I am finding I care very much for many of you; even those of you I cannot for the life of me remember ever meeting. I want to correct/straighten/remedy that lapse. September next?
"If I ran the zoo," said young Gerald McGrew, "I'd make a few changes, that's what I'd do." Told you there'd be something of literary import appended to this, and that was it. Selah.
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