Robert Beckhardt:
CLASS OF 1966
W. Tresper Clarke High SchoolClass of 1966
Westbury, NY
Robert's Story
Written anticipating The Reunion:
Now that we are all sinking deeper into nostalgia's fever dream, the debut of the iPhone seems like ancient history and The Junior Prom seems fresh and vivid as that time when all our hormonal sap was beginning to peak... half a century ago. More prospecting in the attic and I hit on more gold... a copy of Scope '65 with a two-page spread featuring Class of '66 Junior Prom, now forever enshrined on classmates.com as a digital echo of "Yesterdayness." As I was scanning these I was thinking about Paul's request to say something about who we are now, how and what we are doing, which way to rhetorically ramble that Mrs. Strassberg and Mrs. Green would find critically worthy... and still give folks a tantalizing preview of the surprisingly charismatic sage, the Me to emerge from the boyish charm of a guy whose self-esteem was forever boosted when told at a high school dance, "You sweat less than any boy I ever met who has the confidence of a hamster." Such is the stuff where enduring self- knowledge begins to corrode self-esteem. Here goes. It's kinda long so don't take your Ambien yet.
So, "Who am I now, how am I doing, what am I doing?" Answering this is naturally a challenge since their are so many ways to misinterpret the evidence that might unravel the mystery of how the journey from from a first kiss** memorializes the high school as my most formative adolescent TBI leading to the Journey and present destination of who we are. It's a knot reunions are always tempted to try untying again. With that in mind I'll try to anticipate some of those probing questions, stimulate the volatile fantasies folks might have about each other but are nervous to mention fearing...??? I say this having learned from past reunions that there is always going to be a vacuous and edgy "Big Lull" where language stops breathing after the icebreakers about "The Kids," how good everyone looks, some gossip about the no-shows because they are in jail, a day late and a dollar short on the child support, the reminiscing about proms, the offers to become another friendly social imaginary on Facebook, maybe even an intimate, revealing exchange about a health tip like "best root vegetables for rehab." And I should warn people who talk to me that the ears I was always afraid would keep growing have turned to stone. Even with my very fancy gadgets plugged in, when it's noisy, you might say, "Did I hear you retired on a llama ranch?" and I'll hear something about "Do I fear being inspired when the Obamas dance?" So it goes.
Now sometimes, to give people's imagination a better shot at getting a feel for the contours of who you are, it's preferable to fill in the blanks of what you're not. In that spirit I'll say that I don't live just South of Boston anymore in a town where lots of the men still wear Madras shorts and blue, blue blazers. Volvos never lost the durable luster there of a brand for advertising fears about surviving a head-on chauffeuring the kids to tennis lessons. Women named Muffie and Bambi never stopped wearing whales on their watchbands or shopping at Talbott’s Whose hometown, Hingham, Mass was mine for 20 years. I did not become a Rotarian, never played golf or tennis, never tried to ski or bowl. Never failed to fund my pension plan. Never trusted mosquitoes or liars. Never tried to learn why money had so many secrets or why tornadoes loved trailer parks. Couldn't see why the shenanigans of sailing a Riodulce Guatamala 42 off Marblehead was so popular. If I wanted company with intellectual speed bumps I would never have avoided a chance to rodeo at more snowmobile roundups. Never tempted to raise pygmy goats or purchase a capably macho SUV on the chance that I would suddenly become trapped by a ferocious urge to off-road-it in the Yucatan some Fourth of July weekend. And attending one Elks Club Meat Raffle made me sure I never wanted to visit a mecca for UFO buffs but that they (The Buffs) sure made for good friends I could advise on Zoloft vs Paxil vs Mike’s Hard Lemonade with a Red Bull chaser. I’m still wary of people who don’t like dogs or Bacon Crumble Nach Pizza. I am unduly compassionate to those who don’t believe being a parent is the best thing they’ve ever done best. I never thought it was a mistake to decide in the fourth grade on a medical career and never started that career thinking that at my 40th high school reunion one of my great accomplishments would be to write 10,000 Prozac prescriptions. Neither did I think retirement was imminent. I did not die when learning that any explanation of life requires the inclusion of a miracle or that you ...Expand for more
are immortal until you have a name for what can kill you. I did not conclude that my adventures with illness (try to imagine feeling like you are about to experience a different miracle: "sudden dentistry") were random misfortune. I did not ignore the message from the Universe telling me it was time to change my life. I retired, threw a dime on a map (of Barnet, VT) and decamped forthwith, the woman I share my life with equally impressed with the message.
So, on a 100 point scale from "Adequate" to "Dandy" how am I doing?" About 72 these daze, which means I'm "Partly dandy with little chance of getting decked by a falling piano today." Good enough karma for the pre-reunion ritual: pondering the deep wisdom of The Third Act's Arrival I've successfully winnowed from the deep nonsense of My Adventures Getting Here, The Titanic confronting it's iceberg, my deck chair on the cusp of the Baghvahd Gita. Not everyone hums the same oldies to recall the authentic beginning of our trip to the landmark reunion we're celebrating. In the pics above The Righteous Bro's are crooning a favorite: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," as if to warn us, I suppose, that your heart might get broken many times before it gets broken into. The reunions, for me (and I've been to each one) have always been like a dream where "strangers" with familiar names and more vaguely familiar faces show up every ten years, as if they were friendly tourists you never think you will see again... but some you do, always dressed up in mufti as their parents. With each reunion the dream wigs me out just a bit more since everyone looks like an increasingly authentic version the people I remember as kids peeking from behind a loose fitting mask. And next morning, like dreams, they disappear. No matter, there is forever something quite extraordinary being with people who knew you when you were young, and in being there, let you get to taste the agile zest of your youth again. Memory will always immortalize, as they were when last seen, the unforgettable freshness of those cut down at the top of their beauty... Ah, Wes McLean, the gymnastically valorous soccer goalie, a Vietnam victim before we graduated. And sweet Melody Bennett who I knew from first grade, vanished in the quantum foam before the first reunion. The rest of us will have to settle for the way memory blends the face memorialized in Scope with the real-time museum of identity that is forever surrendering to gravity, Botox or more mascara.
Finally, what did I learn? It's probably clear by now that I prefer the mostly straight-up, unvarnished confessional/humorous over the more gilded sobbing of purely sentimental reminiscence. Don't expect any wisdom to include lurid narratives of the licentious abandon that taught me the truth. No one wants details about your own encounter with the Vermilion Border at the frontier of erotic eeriness or that first bout of herpes. Rather, think something like how stimulated you would feel checking off: "Plucked all the lint from the Velcro of my travel luggage." You may be able to get an excellent summary of a person's character from the shape of their sandcastle, but no one should be judged by their Pluckit List! A much better metric is to see who surrenders to kissing till you can’t breathe.
Here goes:
The truth may hurt...like many of life's best lessons.
There are no easy answers.
Everything is a trade-off.
80% of luck is preparation.
Acapulco Gold does not count as fiber...
In fact a mind so indulged can’t count at all .
OK. That's the heavy fatalistic stuff. Here are some lighter thoughts on the wisdoms of maturity:
"What is a condominium?" Is not the correct answer to the Jeopardy hint, "small birth control device."
If you can't remember where you were when Kennedy was assassinated, napping on memory foam ain't gonna help. (Princeton on a 10th grade field trip to see "Playboy of the Western World.")
Reincarnation means never having to say you are dead.
Some questions you might ask someone to get a conversation breathing again during "The Big Lull":
How many times have you labeled pictures of a sunset with the hashtag #bruiseddisappointmentofromance?
Are you Beatles or Elvis, Zoloft or Prozac?
Do you spend you life waiting to talk when you should have listened?
Is the safest answer for men these days to the query "Boxers or briefs?": "Well, it depends."
If you are "in the mood" is it a turn-on hearing your sweetheart whisper, "Brace yourself!"
Should you call a doctor if an election lasts more than 4 hours?
Do you now completely understand why Kaos prefers anonymity on the Internet? See you this weekend!
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