world fender-bender

Like when two worlds collide, but not as severely.

This morning was very odd. D and I went to check out a Lutheran school for A's kindergarten (and possibly beyond). It was the school D attended, K-5, and the same school many of my friends went to and subsequently made their way to the Lutheran high school. My elementary school, sadly, is defunct due to a lot of mismanagement and fear of neighborhood changes. Old white Germans don't really live around there anymore, but the old white Germans in charge couldn't handle the transition. They would rather the school die, apparently. Nicht Gut. 

Baltimore is Smalltimore, as most people know who have spent more than 2 years here. For those of us who have spent 90 percent of our lives here, one would be hard pressed to go anywhere without recognizing at least one person. It makes going out without makeup particularly treacherous, if I cared about that sort of thing. 

If you take the Smalltimore phenomenon and grow it exponentially, you can get a good idea of what it's like to return to a Lutheran school after a long absence. It's not merely the associations one has with the physical space, though those are enough; walking through the hallway of my old middle school sent torrents of insecurity through my whole body, and I hadn't even seen anyone. The smell. The lockers, floor polish, radiators, copy paper, the mustiness of hormonal anxiety, gym shoes. It was a little too much to handle. 

Luckily I didn't have too many associations with the buildings we visited today. The only times I had been there were for middle school record hops, all at night and in the basement of the church, which I probably wouldn't recognize even if it had a smoke machine and strobe lights going. And Def Leppard blasting from the speakers.

Today, it wasn't the place but the people who sent me plunging into a contemplative mood. The principal was D's confirmation teacher, a formative person in his life. She was one of the few adults D said had been completely honest about life when she taught him. Knowing how quick D is at spotting baloney, I had been eager to meet this woman for a long time. She really is extraordinary, loves middle school kids (my personal favorites), and is a whole lot shorter than D remembered. She's been there for a very long time, which is a great sign for an elementary school, and has a great rapport with the teachers. 

We took a tour of the school, and several times a teacher's name would be mentioned, "so-and-so's wife," so-and-so being someone I graduated with or went to the ice rink with, or had all my classes with and hardly ever talked to (a real feat in a class of 50 kids total).  The most anxiety-inducing of these names belonged to an ex-boyfriend's mom, who is a middle school teacher. She's sweet, super-nice, and I clearly remember the last time I saw her: dropping me and her son off at the movie theater for a date. Jeez. 

Even though there's a lot of water under the bridge, 15 years of water in fact, it's still rather unpleasant to see someone and wonder what they're thinking. "Yes, I remember you. You're the one who broke my son's heart." Or something equally horrible, and probably not at all what's going through her mind.  But it was going through mine. I was not nice to boys, not at all. I don't think I ever had a rational thought for my whole dating career, when I look back on it. Teenagers are irrational, yes, but I had convinced myself of my superior intelligence which kept me even further separated from reality. "All these boys are lame, and I am so far above them," I would say as I agreed to go out with one of them, and then another. Staggering idiocy.

I'm probably being too harsh with myself, with all the intervening time making me much more critical. But there are a few people in particular I can't think of without shame and remorse, and a prayer that the wounds I inflicted were much less than I fear. I am friends with some of these guys now, which has been a real, if awkward, relief. I know though, that there are things that happened in high school and college that still grieve me, so I can only guess that there might be someone who can't think of me without a great deal of negativity. Well, I can't do much about that except track them down on Facebook and send a long-overdue apology. If I don't, I'll probably run into them at the grocery store in my sweats. That will be the day I decide to move to California.