Ever wanted to go back and impress people that didn't recognize you for what you knew you were?

I don't mean showing off.  I mean being recognized as something different than what you are tagged as. 

Guess what I was in high school.  Was a I a jock?  Perhaps I was a prep or preppy.  There were also head bangers, dirts, losers, nerds, wanna be's, and the ever hated in crowd.  I was nothing.  Really.  I was a guy that didn't like any of these crowds.  I was into spies, detectives, playing Frisbee, riding my bike on long distance treks, the beach and music.  I was heavy into music if I was anything.  I didn't goto school much.  I resented the way I was being treated and rather than deal with it, I just avoided it.  Sometimes because I felt sorry for myself, others because I just did not care.  The students were so intent on not hearing anything I had to say as worthwhile conversation that I just didn't think that high-school amounted to much.  I wondered why my interests were of no interest.  My biggest interest was girls.  I remember my freshman year a couple that sat together;  Chip and Beth.  He was as average as they come.  She was the most attractive average girl you could picture.  I thought, "If I could just find one girl like that, I'd be happy."  I said that, but the fact is I liked beautiful girls.  Because the girls in my school figured I didn’t' rate, or thought I was an outcast for lack of knowing anything about me... I always dated outside my school, and I did well.  For this reason I had confidence and resented my school because I thought they all had me wrong.  Who knows?  But I do know that I resented it.  I had two friends. They've since gone separate ways and they were hard people to like because they were charismatic but untrustworthy.  No loss there.  The year I graduated I became very popular with many of my peers.  I reason it was because I played sandlot football every weekend at the high school football field and I was one of the best.  I was one of those guys you could rarely tackle.  That skill came young when kids in my neighborhood played "smear the queer" were you ran from one boundary to another with a football and if you didn't drop it everyone gang tackled you.  If you made to a safe zone you waited until you could run again.  I learned quickly I had a talent of avoiding tackles and worming my way free quickly.

So I suddenly found a lot of friends.  Guys that knew me from school wanted to hurt me the first time they played me; "Get Hindsley! Kill him!"  And by the end of the day I won true respect. 

This is what I began to hope for when would return for a class reunion over the years.  About 10 years out of high school I thought of girls I once knew looking at me differently and guys having a normal conversation with me. 

But now, 20 years out.  I'm still thin, still look young, my wife is hot as hell, and I've got a good life worth boasting of.  It means nothing.  I went to the class reunion and didn't think to discuss my life in any detail. Perhaps it is because nobody was there that I could connect with in the first place.  Perhaps it was because many of these people were not from my true class.  I was originally class of 83.  For reasons you don't want to know and I don't want to go into... I became class of 84.  So what if I had caught up with the prior year classmates?  I'm sure it would have been the same. Nothing much to say and no hard feelings. 

Sure I recall a pang of feelings when I saw people that clearly looked down on me.  But those people were never cruel, so what should I feel anything other than curiosity of where they were now?  What should I have felt at a class reunion?  Only one thing stood out.  A girl from what I think was a typing class saw my wife and I walk in.  Her jaw dropped when she saw us.  I think it was for my wife. Perhaps that was my highlight of the evening but again if your wife looks like mine, you grow to expect that of others.  And that was my class reunion.