Class: I headed out to have lunch with seven of my classmates, all of us in our mid-eighties. I don’t know why it particularly struck me now, but all of our lunches over these past couple of decades have been at private clubs, not just regular restaurants. The two I’ve been to last month and now did not admit Jews until fairly recently.
Though we all came from families that could afford our tuition, some old money, some new money, going to that private school meant we were in a particular social class …different if you were Christian.
While who is at these lunches varies over time, they are a place for stories, both from the past and present. Today there was a lot of talk about various health issues: beginning of Parkinson’s, recovery from strokes, afib, etc. Then dogs: new puppies, having to put down old friends.
At some point, as it always does, the stories go back to our youth at the private school we had attended together. I have written in the past in prose and poetry that, while we were there at the same time, I was not a part of many of their experiences. I didn’t take Chemistry and blow things up; have to spend Saturday mornings in detention; steal the QR volume from the encyclopedia set.
The conversation turned to social happenings. Who dated whom. All their invitations to black-tie parties, their regularly-attended social event of the year where debutantes were “presented to society.”
I could not be part of any of that banter. I have none of these stories.
I wonder when and how, in their minds, I became an equal. Surely it was not back then since I did not excel in academics or sports. Part of it, I know, was my own insecurity, but there was always a separation, overt and covert, at this predominately Protestant-Christian, non-sectarian, elite private school.
Now it’s sixty-six years since Commencement. I experience their comradery at these meals. I am secure in myself and where I am in my life. I am part of this class…except I am not.
