Meetin' in the Ladies' Room

So it’s harder to find the women. Many of you have chosen to take your husbands’ names, as did I, at least temporarily. (Who knows how long it’ll last? I mean, he’s a good guy and all….) When I plug in your names at Switchboard.com, I don’t know these phone numbers I’m getting. Am I supposed to just start dialing one night as if I’ve had too many wine coolers?

Please send me your address if only to save me from embarrassment. Even if you think that someone from SHS knows how to reach you, just drop me a line. You wouldn’t believe the anxiety dreams I’m having about this stuff.

Sonja Watkins, didn’t you and I co-narrate a children’s play? I vaguely remember the two of us wearing white and green long-sleeve t-shirts and sitting on stools with a giant fake book. We told a Cajun version of the Three Little Pigs, and Georgina was there, and Kenneth from the class of 85, and a lot of little kids.

Debbie Lybanon illustrated early how a woman could do it all, have it all. She was in NJROTC and choir; she had a stellar GPA, ranking no. 5 in our class. She had a boyfriend, too. For all I know, she went home and whipped out perfect cable-knit sweaters after kicking her trigonometry homework across the room for boring her. Why is it I can’t find Debbie today? Has she mastered yet another talent by disappearing from the planet?

Lacy Wright, I borrowed your name once. At a football game, two guys asked my name and I gave “Lacy” because it’s so pretty and, for one moment, I wanted a name that cool. Of course, it was no time at all before they learned my real name, which showed how really uncool I was, thereby deserving a much plainer label, such as goofball. If Lacy had learned about my attempt at name theft, would she have beat me with her flag after performing with the Tiger Stripes on the field?

See that senior portrait up there? I think Mechelle Clifton was in my physics class, the one tortured by Mr Trygg. It's that I remember having some class with her, and I remember her sitting in the good row over by the windows while I was in the crappy row by the door. My guess is physics because there are lab tables in that memory. About the only other thing I didn’t block out is Joe getting us in trouble when he would sing, loudly and tunelessly, “The stars at night are big and bright….” If you were there, you know what happened next.

Mechelle, where are you, girl?


(The 20th-year reunion is Saturday, June 10, 2006. Do we know how to reach you? No, really?)