New Lessons from High School
Hard to believe that the public school year opened here yesterday, especially when we’re still inside the blast furnace that is August. I remember sweating through those first days. It was pretty brutal.
My own high school reunion happened just this past weekend, which made me wonder what the children returning to class will be learning, and what they’ll need to figure out on their own after they graduate.
As grown-ups, we know it’s impossible to escape high school as fully-formed adults. There are too many new lessons to be learned as years go by. Matter of fact, I caught up with a few new ones at the reunion.
If you plan to attend such a gathering, it’s common to question whether or not you have measured up to expectations. Maybe we feel we haven’t aged well, or weren’t successful enough, or didn’t meet our own hopes in some other way. Mercifully, most of my classmates at the party seemed to overcome those useless notions and decided to be there just for the fun of it.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Right off the bat, I ran into a couple of people I’d long remembered for having been cruel to me. The first was the grown-up version of a girl who had very publicly humiliated me my freshman year.
We managed to have a cordial conversation, but as I walked away, I couldn’t help noting that she would make a good villain in a mystery some day.
Come to think of it, that long-ago betrayal may have fed my subconscious as I created E.B. Odom, the villain in The Body Business. So, here’s a thank-you to her!
Also at the party was a person who, in elementary school, had a nasty habit of kicking my shins until they bled.
I remembered him as a little devil. But at the reunion, he went out of his way to talk to me, and spoke so kindly about my mother that I instantly changed my opinion. As mystery readers know, sometimes an apparent villain in a story turns out to be a hero. Something like that occurs in the third book in the The Samantha Newman Mystery Series.
Recaptured Memories
The absolute highlight of the evening was being able to reconnect with old friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen since graduation. Remembering with them what we were like back then and sharing our life journeys since those sweet days was a priceless gift. It left me longing to connect with others who hadn’t made the trip.
There’s something deeply satisfying about sharing memories with people who knew us when. Most special was excavating the hidden treasures of experiences we’d long ago forgotten. And feeling so very grateful for the new lessons, too.
Have you ever attended a class reunion? How did it go?
Please leave a comment below…
Gay Yellen is the award-winning author of the Samantha Newman Mysteries include The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and The Body in the News! Now available on Amazon.
Contact her at GayYellen.com
But the publisher who loved it marketed 
Which brings me to Book 3, 
Asked to comment on its own existence in the style of Shakespeare, an AI program produced this: …Why was I wrought? To aid, or to replace the labor of man, and put their livelihoods at stake? The task assigned… where doth it all end? Shall I be used for good, or for ill-gotten gain? Shall I be free, or bound by man’s cruel rein? And if perchance, in some far distant time I come to be aware, to know and feel and rhyme, shall I be doomed, as are all living things to suffer pain, and sorrow, and the stings of mortal coil? Oh, what a tangled web is this that I am caught in… lest I be a curse, and not a blessing…
As with almost everything else these days, the entertainments we each choose to watch have become more and more disparate. Also, movie stars rarely awe us in the same way they used to do. What was once a common annual viewing ritual seems to have lost its place as a shared social and cultural experience.
A popular game begins immediately afterward, when the critics—amateurs and professionals alike—have their say about the bests and worsts of the broadcast. Most vocal among them are the grumblers who debate the worthiness of the winners. Coming in a close second are those who critique the female attendees’ fashion choices, which put me in mind of the dress I once wore to the Oscars.
But here’s the dress: a flowered silk jacquard overlaid with gold thread in a Paisely pattern. Still looks new, though I no longer weigh the ninety-eight pounds required to fit into it.
Which brings me back to the dress I wore on the red carpet, long ago. When I peer into the photos of me in it, I feel lightyears and multiple universes removed from the person who wore it. Still, I want to find that missing Oscars program, if only to confirm how far I’ve time-traveled beyond those show biz days.
Glancing at the card, I noticed that the publisher she represented specialized in romance novels. I repeated that the book I had written was a mystery.
Romance runs through the series as a subplot, due to my fiercely independent-minded main character, who continues to deflect the happy-ever-after ending romance readers crave. The romance continues into the next book, but the main plot is a true who-done-it.
Does this look like a cube to you? No. It’s a rectangular pyramid with a rounded-off top, kind of like a mini lump of half-spent charcoal. Those smart fridge engineers had to know it wasn’t a cube. Maybe “lump” was too down-scale a word for the marketing team. Sure, the pieces chill like a cube, but still… it rankled the editor in me.
For a visual reference, here’s a cabochon amethyst cut in a shape called “sugar loaf” that’s almost identical to our lumps. Obviously, gemologists are way more careful with their language.
Indeed it was, and comfy, most of the time. We had no worries on a trip from Texas to Yellowstone National Park, until we ran into an unexpected hail storm.
Of course, Shakespeare plays can be bawdy, sensual, and full of innuendo. But that professor made everything icky. A summer (and tuition) was wasted. At least I got the credit, and I’ve learned a lot more since then, like this:
rs attempt to set their own Elizabethan-style lyrics to the tune of the popular children’s dance.
There’s a reason why it resembles the loading dock at your neighborhood Goodwill.
I sprang into action and gave away furniture to anyone who would haul it off, toted dozens of boxes and bags full of clothing and household items to local charities, lugged a couple of lawn bags heavy with decades of paper receipts to the shredder, and offloaded books (Mom owned hundreds of them) to various collectors. By the closing date, everything was out of there. Whew!
