Recollecting

 Watching movies about kids in high school makes me wistful for those days when I used to have wild parties when my parents were out of town. Or the time I challenged the head of the ski team to a race down Dead Man's Hill. How about when the new English teacher tried to seduce me and my friends? Boy, those were the days. 

Except none of those things happened. Not to me, anyway. There were hints and allegations, as the poet said, but most everything that took place during those three years were your standard issue adolescence. I heard about parties in the woods, but I never attended. My parents welcomed my friends into their home and we respected them and they respected our privacy for the most part once we headed down to the basement. Where we mostly played Atari and ping pong, ate some pizza,  and imagined a time when we would all have dates. 

Eventually my friends and I, all of us members of the marching band, found love or something that resembled love. And we believed that our lives were as impossibly complex as anyone else's before us. Every Friday night was a chance to achieve greatness. Every Saturday night could be the stuff of legend. When Monday rolled around again, we commiserated about what might have been. What should have been. 

And what never was. 

It felt like the most important time of our lives, and maybe it was. Even though none of us ever won a drag race, or kidnapped the Homecoming Queen. I did steal a stop sign. I rode my bike home with my jacket draped over it under my arm. The cops didn't catch me. Not that they were interested. We played our music loud, but not so loud that anyone got yelled at by a neighbor. Nobody spent a night in jail. Richie Cunningham got to hang around with the Fonz. We just hung out with each other. Most of us were up to being Richie in that pairing, but none of us could make the jukebox start up by banging it just so. 

But I did fold one of the records of the double album of the Grease soundtrack in half. Shards of which were handed out as souvenirs to guests lucky enough to have been at that particular party. That gave us all something to talk about while we waited for something really exciting to happen. 

Something they might make a movie about one day.