A New Year 2012

I don't usual wallow in nostalgia on the first day of a new year, but, somehow this year feels different. I'm not inclined to believe that 2012 is really "IT," the end of the line, the last days. No, I'm feeling the number, 2012, so balanced on the printed page, and twenty twelve, soft, as it rolls off the tongue, unlike twenty eleven, god, such a harsh number.

I've made it a pretty strict rule not to rethink my life. Us mere mortals don't get do overs, and all the layers of emotion and experience are best left alone anyway. I can remember some life-changing  events, moments that altered the course of mine. But, there in the distant past, too many years ago to remember in precise detail. Although, clear enough to know that, if I had made a small swerve, a tiny jog, my entire life would be different. So, I suppose, in some parallel universe, I'm living and dying on alternate life paths.

I left high school in 1955, that's 57 years ago, not a great span of time, a mere 499, 320 hours, 20,805 days, or a couple of billion heart beats. A speck of time compared to earth's age, some 4.578 billion years.

Why am I thinking about high school? The other day, on face book, a mutual friend from high school left a post, and I wanted to refresh my memory of who it was. I picked up my old high school year book and decided that I did remember this woman. Her nickname was Greene, although I don't remember why. And while I was at it, I reread the inscriptions, just for old time's sake of course. 

Some of the inscriptions ... like anyone would be interested. But, I'm thinking, year book inscriptions might make an interesting reality show.

From Tooly: Robert Tooley. Son of the local news paper editor an owner.

Hope you make it, best of luck.

From: Joyce Denason

Dear Stanley

Good luck in the future. I like you even if you are conceited.

Obviously didn't know much about me.

From: Byron Bennett

Dear Idiot

Good luck to you. Hope you make it out of high school.

I really didn't graduate from high school that year. I got my diploma in California the next year.

From: Jane Pitman. My on again off again girl friend.

My very best wishes for a happy and successful life. I think a lot o you Stan, even though I don't like some of the things you do. As always ...

She obviously did know something about me. In college, she met this guy named Pitman and they got married. She has four children and complains of high blood pressure.


From: Bertha Schwartz. Junior and senior English teacher.

I didn't find the right words, did I?

I've never figured out what she was trying to tell me.

From: Theresa Biad: Full name. Theresa Louise Julia Biad.

Dear Stan

May you always have the best of everything. Your friend and class mate.


Theresa started at Hot Springs High in her Junior year. Her parents had moved from Brooklyn and bought a ranch downriver a few miles, don't know why. She was a bit reserved, and our biology teacher, old man Scott, liked to tease her sometimes.  He nick named her euglena when we were learning about single cell protozoa's. She took it well. I don't remember her having  the same Brooklyn tude that you usually encounter.

Yes, old man Scott, taught biology, P. E. and was the head foot ball coach. He was kind of short muscular, smoked a pipe and did have a sense of humor. Before games, the team would form a circle so that Coach Scott could take a piss. How classy men are. Don't you think? However, his main achievement in life, at least to us young studs; was his wife. She was the most fucking, awesome ess, put together goddess of a woman, in the whole fucking universe, at that time. Rumor had it that she owed him her life or something, and that's how he had wound up with her? What else could explain it. She belonged in Hollywood on the arm of Carey Grant or one of the other guys with a cleft chin, not in a no place town in the middle of New Mexico. She came to all the foot ball games and sat there aloof, demure, unsmiling, just looking awesome. I never had the good fortune to be really close to her. But the foot ball guys did get up close once in a while when the coach would bring her around. They said, and I can almost believe it, that you couldn't look at her for more that a few moments before turning away or closing your eyes. They told me, and I can really believe this; they were afraid their dicks would explode if they stayed around her for any length of time. O course, exploding dicks were always a concern for us guys. We were walking hard-on's living in mortal fear that our dicks would wear out or break before we got to use them. Hopefully, with some doll like the coaches. But, really, was there a maximum number of hard-on's you could have in a life time? Something to worry about, I can tell you.

Oh well, one more inscription. This one made me feel good even thought it wasn't true.

From: Garry McFee

To one of the best jazz drummers I have ever heard.

By this time I had been playing the drums about 18 months so on a scale of 1 to 10, I would register about a -2. It was nice of Garry to think it anyway.

This year probably won't be much better for the world, but I think it sounds a lot better. Twenty Twelve.