Fragments: "reflected fame"

(First of all, an explanation to newer readers: once in a while, I like to make up stories. I haven't done it in a long while, haven't had any ideas. I like to post some of the better ideas I have here, just for the heck of it, seeing as they're really not long enough or detailed enough to flesh out into real stories but I'd like to record them somewhere a bit more public than the hard drive of my computer.

Oh, they're mostly non-autobiographical but a few of the minor facts of this one sort of are autobiographical, even if the narrator is the opposite gender from me).



...I was tooling down the highway, in the field van. The students had finally persuaded me to let them turn the radio on. Normally I don't; I don't drive with the radio on in my own car because I find it distracting, and driving the superannuated 15 passenger vans my department provides for our conservation students requires every bit of concentration I have. But it was a warm day, exams were coming up, and I figured it was best to be a little nice to the students.

They tuned it to one of the college-rock stations - the kind that play a mishmash of stuff, some old Clapton, some weird alterna-bands I've never heard of, some really poppy stuff. A woman comes on, singing in kind of a folky style. I think I know her voice but don't say anything until after the song ends.

One of the students - Bill - makes the comment about Desiridata's hotness, about what a great singer she is. A couple of the other guys chime in and a few of the women in the class express a certain envy for her lifestyle.

So I decide to drop the bomb.

"I knew her in high school. She went to high school with me."

General sounds of disbelief from the class.

"No, really. She was called Margret Enderby then. When we were in school I thought she was interested in going the pre-med route in college. I guess that changed when someone told her she could sing."

"But....she's like 25?!?" Chase exclaimed.

I made a dismissive sound with my lips. "Please. She would have had to have been an infant prodigy. She graduated the same year as I did, and I'm almost 40."

Groans from the guys in the bus. Another fantasy destroyed, I suppose. Perhaps it was mean but there really wasn't any going back now.

"Are you sure? I mean, couldn't there have been some girl at your high school that you just thought became her? Or maybe Desiridata is her daughter?"

Ouch.

"No, they had a big article on her in the alumni magazine a couple years back..."

The kids start exclaiming and asking about "alumni magazine." Well, crap.

"Yeah, my high school has an alumni magazine." I added, more softly, "I went to prep school and the alumni are scattered all over the nation."

I don't like to let that fact out; I know enough of the tougher conservation guys already regard me as somewhat of a pansy-ass given my background and the fact that I don't discuss my romantic exploits. But I couldn't just stop; I had gotten so far in my explanation of how Desiridata was actually a remarkably well-preserved middle-aged woman. Like Madonna, you know?

For that matter, I've had students express disbelief that I'm nearly 40. And I admit there's a certain fun in proving to them that I am. I suppose a lot of them - coming from the backgrounds they do - see guys who are completely burned out and beaten down by life by the time they hit my age, and I'm kind of just now hitting my full maturity. (I've claimed to students who wanted to know how I stayed so young that it was because I never married or had children. I think some of them may see me as somewhat of a libertine for having made that statement, though their assumption is pretty far from the truth - I live a damn near monkish life, and frankly I like it that way).

"So Dr. Holcomb," Chase said, leaning over the front of the seat, "What was she like in high school? Was she hot then? Did you like her?"

"Did you ask her to the prom?" called one of the women in the back and the bus erupted in laughter.

The truth is, I didn't know Margret that well in high school. She was way beyond me in looks, and true to the old saying that girls mature faster than boys, she was already essentially an adult while my friends and I were still swapping Spiderman comics and trying to imagine the grossest Slurpee flavor possible. So I decided on the truth:

"Margret was a very beautiful girl in high school. She was kind of distant, the sort of person you didn't approach. I wound up asking Pam Butzler to the prom - she had braces and glasses and was the only girl I thought would go with me."

"So did you make it with Pam Butzler?" Leave it to David to immediately go the most inappropriate place possible.

But what the hell. Again, I could tell the truth: "No. It turned out one of the things in the punch at the after-prom was something she was allergic to. She started throwing up and I had to drive her to the hospital in my dad's old Crown Victoria. I wound up sitting in the ER with her for a half-hour before her parents could get there. Then I just went home."

Some of the guys groaned. Some of the women made that sound - that sound where you know you've done something OK in their eyes, that you're not a total cad or loser.

"Would you ask Desiridata out if she were around here today?"

"No. No, I have no desire to try to make high school the way I wanted it to be by reliving it." I realize some of them don't understand that yet, but they will.