Remember 'ol 1996
Side note: all I have to say about the recent elections is: thank $deity for the new era of sweet, sweet gridlock. We’ve finally turned the master valve for the broken water main of our Democracy. I’m not saying the Democrats are the harbingers of change, but I’m expecting the next two years to be blissfully silent, which is almost as good.
Susan, if you could do me a huge favor and bring this to the Foss reunion, I’d greatly appreciate it and gladly repay with anything you ask. Print it out, forward them to my website, give them my phone number. Even if nobody bothers to contact me, I’d sleep better knowing the information had been disseminated.
To the Henry Foss Class of 1996, IB Edition
Ten years. We met each other as Freshmen, barely older than the years since graduation we’ve spent pursuing life, family, or World Domination. Not everyone could return, myself among them, but the cliche is true: we’re all here in spirit. Strange how a decade elicits nostalgia for even the awkward period of youth many strive to forget. I find myself actually missing the mere smell of Mr. Mills’ classroom, mundane group activities, and even the unbridled hell that was Senior IB testing, simply because we did them together.
I won’t bore you with details of my meandering path, but I never married that girl I met in college. Though someone in IB predicted my arrogance would drive me to engineering, I’m but a lowly database admin in Chicago. I may have seemed full of myself in IB, but the truth is more complicated. Once upon a time, I lacked any permanent residence or school, fought to escape living in squalor, and was socially stunted, so academia was literally all I could claim. Until four years in IB forced a bonding forged in common suffering, I believed my heart surgery went awry and I should have died in 1984, so invisible I felt. But I hope we share an understanding beyond personal struggles now, especially viewed through the perspective of new wisdom. It’s been a long time, and I doubt we’ve allowed stagnation and banality to hamper improvements in our character and outlook. I am the Night Writer no more.
I’ve heard many of you have families, others own businesses, but as predicted, we’re all successful in our own right. It’s silly to think of everyone as perpetual figments of my imagination, but creative as I may be, I’m certain you’ve all eclipsed my capability of constructing fanciful and wild futures, so I’m left only with memories. Many of us have websites scattered through the Ether, some with RSS feeds to make tracking easier, others on the untamed frontier of MySpace. So I put forth the question: should we have a mailing list? I’d hate to think that after a dearth of communication among us, we miss the chance to rectify the situation. I sincerely miss all of you, even the teachers who facilitated our academic torture.
But since I assume you want to enjoy the reunion, speak of old times and what’s transpired in the interim, I’ll invite you to contact me later when the excitement is through and you have sufficient inclination. Life is chaotic and tumultuous, so it’s good to enjoy the comforts of old friends, even through immeasurable distance and fuzzy recollections.
Shaun “Bones Moses” Thomas : shaun@bonesmoses.org
Until Tomorrow