Forty years from the shore

Forty years ago, late on a balmy Missouri night, I sat in my snazzy new electric-blue 1965 Dodge Dart convertible with my favorite gal-pal Ann, a willowy brunette with an early-onset acerbic view of the world.

What I liked about Ann was her ability to co-create the delusion of our certainty. She was convinced that we were wise beyond our years and circumstances; certainly, we would be able to answer all of life's mysteries.

As proof of her advanced wisdom, Ann would ride me unmercifully about my claim in the "Senior Spotlight" that my favorite song was "Stranger On The Shore," a mournful clarinet ditty by Acker Bilk. She maintained that this was some vain attempt on my part to distinguish myself as some pathetic Misunderstood Poetic Soul.

Looking back, I have to admit it was all a bit, well, dramatic. (My favorite song was really "What's New Pussycat?" by Tom Jones.)

All of these reflections came flooding back on me when the invitation came in the mail with all of its "Return to Happy Days" cheer: The Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of '65 was celebrating 40 years gone by along with other classes from that now legendary decade of the '60s.

I am pretty sure Ann and I never brought up the specter of our 40th class reunion on that long-ago balmy night. The idea would have certainly seemed bizarre to us. Could we ever be that old? It was inconceivable.

To attend one's 40th high school reunion is to confirm the fact that being that old has indeed been conceived. Unfortunately, I will have to miss this opportunity, as a work-related obligation will keep me in California.

What I will miss is that delicious opportunity to marvel at how everyone has changed. I am certain that many have gotten larger, probably most have gotten shorter; and let's not even talk about hair and its quirky migrations.

Some will be grandparents, others will be denying it all with a little help from modern science. Others will be improbably caught in a time warp of dubious '60s chic. Some will look exactly like I remember their parents' did. And yes, I am sure many will have aged most gracefully ... and I do mean that in the kindest way.

What I will also miss is the singular experience of having countless classmates squint down at my name tag with my bright-eyed yearbook mug and then up at my now 57-year-old face while composing themselves hurriedly in order to generously lie: "Mike! You haven't changed a bit!"

We were an innocent bunch back then, at least in our small town on the Mississippi River. There were no drugs, and little booze fueling our heady Saturday night drives in packs from the parking lot of Wimpy's (our drive-in hamburger joint of choice) out to the mighty river and back again.

I might have been considered a bit on the wild side by local standards. Actually, as wild as I ever got was organizing the traditional Senior Skip Day (for which I got kicked out of National Honor Society) and buying an antique Cadillac hearse along with several of my "wild" friends and driving to Florida in the summer after our graduation.

The social change that would rock this country four years later seemed a long ways away from our innocent Wimpy's Loop. Forty years down the road of life, we have all surely shed most of our innocence, for better or worse. Life conspires, it seems, to disabuse us of the poetry of our youth. Hopefully most of us will survive this often crude awakening from our Eden. Some of us won't.

Some 30 years after our high school graduation, Ann, my friend who was so certain of our wisdom, died alone in her bed. The circumstances were complicated and obscure. But I know my old friend; I know she died of a dark and deep disappointment, a stranger stranded on her own shore.

Ann and I probably thought that we would have it nailed by the time our 40th reunion came around. All would be answered, all would be revealed. Losing one of your best friends too damned early is only one the many chances our lives give us to know the folly of certainty.

Perhaps, if we are still lucky enough to be standing 40 years down the road, we will have gained not answers, but perspective. We will know that even though much has been gained and much has been lost, that it doesn't always add up. Maybe, we will have learned how to be brave, forever young with a question in our heart.

So here is a curiosity that I have: Who at the '60s reunion will be dancing the same way they did in high school? I know that my adorable sister Christy (class of '67) will be dancing in the same adorable way she did back in the day. I am pretty sure my other fabulous sister Jan (class of '69), will be dancing differently than she most likely did when she was crowned prom queen back in 1969.

Some got their groove on early and remain content with perfecting it. Some will have learned a whole new dance altogether. Others will probably refuse to dance; some will have to get some drink in them to remember what it was like to do the Twist, the Monkey, the Alligator, or the Swim.... and good for them all.

As I said, I won't be there. But if I were ... when the DJ cranks up "Wooly Bully" (by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs), I would like to think it would be enough to turn me, once again, into a the dancing fool I so brilliantly mastered when I was 17 and a "poetic misunderstood youth" who blessedly didn't know any better.

Dr. Michael O.L. Seabaugh, a Cape Girardeau native, is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, Calif. Contact him at mseabaugh@semissourian.com.