A funny thing happened on the way to the circus.  I've always wanted to start a conversation or an article that way.  Anyway, so the funny thing was, which now that I think about it, isn't so funny.  I was with some friends taking our 4 kids to the circus.  Kids are just kids and someone is bound to run off in some random direction.  It's the circus for cryin' out loud, they're excited!  The random direction just so happened to be toward the busy college street we were walking along.  There really should be a "no darting" sign on every street, don't you think?  This is very important for the sanity of any parent.  Anyway, he darted right towards the street and everyone in the group screamed for him to stop before he actually got into the street.  Of course, having adults yell at you when you're a kid for doing something like that really makes you mad because you (as a kid) know that you're not planning on going INTO the street, just to the edge of the street.   Knowing that and still getting yelled at is probably more embarassing than anything.  So knowing that he was embarassed, I decided to help him out and explain why darting was so dangerous and why I had first hand experience with it myself. 

I digress...back in high school, my junior year to be exact, I was as usual, running late for school.  I had picked up my friend Christy who didn't yet have her license and off we went.  I quickly pulled into a parking space on the side of the street.  If any of you locals remember, it was so busy on the street behind the school at 8am.  So I get out after parking and the next thing I know, I see Christy rushing accross the street before me.  In that fateful split second decision, I remember thinking to myself, well, if she went, it must be clear.  Understand that I often "bleached" my hair with peroxide so that must have been the cause for my lapse in judgement.  Was it clear?  No, it wasn't clear.  All I can say is thank God for whatever that thick book was that was in my backpack (that was probably never opened), it saved a few broken ribs.  An older lady in a big old lady car hit me in the side right on my backpack and threw me accross the street.  At least I got accross, right??  Yeah, well, it was one of those things where I was scared to death but I was more mortified thinking someone saw what happened.  Right, there were only about a hundred kids walking around out there right before the bell rang.  But I was convinced that the only person who saw it was the old lady who hit me.  Christy didn't even see it, she had her back to me because remember, she darted!  So I stood up and brushed myself off listening to these people talking about what had just happened.  All I wanted to do was get into my classroom and crawl into a corner and die.  After I came to, I realized that the lady had driven off.  She didn't even stop to see if I was alright.  I remember someone asking me "did you get her license plate number?"  Oh sure, I had time to unzip my book bag and get out a piece of paper and a pen and jot it down along with a decription of the vehicle while I'm laying on the ground half dead.  Come on people!  I was thrown accross the street and nearly knocked unconscious.   No, I didn't get all that pertinent info.  Sorry!  So I made it into class hoping to forget the entire fiasco.  I thought "whew... I'm in the clear now!"  I sat down in my seat for a few minutes and gathered myself and then I hear the dreaded announcement.  I was called over the intercom(where the entire school could hear) to the principal's office.  If the term OMFG had existed back then, trust me, I would have used it right then and there.  I wondered what in the world I needed to go to the office for but in the back of my mind knowing that it had something to do with "the accident."  Great.  More embarassment.  So I proceed to go to his office and he makes me sit down and tell him what happened.  I'm thinking "who told you?  I'm going to hire a hit man to get rid of whoever it was! This is an invasion of privacy!"  So I explained the whole thing to him and he insisted that he call my mother.  I thought "oh great... not only have I been humiliated today, you have to involve my parents! Wonderful!?"  So he calls my mom and says what every parent never wants to hear.  "Mrs. Smith, there's been an accident......"  and anything after that isn't heard because your heart stops after those 6 words.  He explained that I was fine but that he would feel more comfortable if I were taken to the emergency room to have x-rays to make sure there were no broken bones.  So this just meant more embarassment because I had to wait in the office for her to come pick me up and take me to the hospital. If you saw someone sitting in the office, it seemed like they were about to be taken to jail.  There was this stigma attached to being "in the office" and it seemed like only the worst of the worst students were caught spending time there.  Not only have I been in "an accident," I'm now a victim of profiling. Could this day get any worse??  The good news: no broken bones and I got to stay out of school the rest of the day  The bad news:  I had to go back to school the next day.  I was forced to deal with the public humiliation of everyone knowing what happened.  How could I STILL be the topic of conversation 24 hours later?  Nobody even really knew me!  I might as well have taken out a full page ad in the Oak Ridger.  Everyone knew.  After some time, I eventually lived it down.  Years later when I finally decided it was funny enough, I told the story out loud.  The pain is finally gone and I think I can just get it out there in the open.  It's still embarassing but since I can use it for a good cause to educate others about the importance of not darting.  I feel like I've done some good in this world.

I've fallen a little behind on updates. I have so many photos to upload (which is a good thing). Heard from Greg Addington this weekend - he sent some great shots of our school with the new fresh "face" and Nick Lanier just sent some actual VIDEO from back in the day. So I hope to have all this great material up soon.

My days have been a little crazy lately. How crazy? Well, I just saw a Newsweek article on a woman with 17 alter egos (we're talking multiple personality disorder, here) and my initial reaction to the headline was, "Wow! Now there's a woman who can multi-task!"

Walter, you're right! I am sick. SICK, I say! Where can I get me some of that multiple personality stuff? I have some delegating to do.

--molly

I don’t know what made me think of it today but I was reflecting on one of my more humiliating high school experiences and I thought what the hell; why not share this little nugget with everyone?

 

So it was our junior year and I don’t know how it happened, but it did; I got talked into trying out for cheerleading. It was peer pressure that’s all I can say. I had absolutely no business trying out for cheerleading but then, my good friend, Lisa Duck, made it look so easy.

 

For those of you who may not remember, Lisa Duck could jump so high, you could go out for a ham sandwich and have it digested before she came back down. It wasn't until tryouts that I discovered that Lisa was a freak of nature. It just is not physically possible for a NORMAL human being to jump that high without the assistance of a trampoline (and a little rocket fuel). I’ve come to suspect steroids.

 

I learned a few other things that week in tryouts, for example:

1. If eye rolling and sighing were the objective, I’d be team captain.

2. In cheerleading, eye rolling and sighing are not the objective.

3. The words, “you have to be freakin’ kidding me, that’s dangerous!” will not get you out of a precarious pyramid situation. And, as a side note, it tends not to win you a whole lot of friends, either.

4. Cheerleading involves a substantial amount of athleticism.

5. I possess zero athleticism. Case in point: I was late for school one day and my Dad told me to run ahead in order to get to class before the bell rang. Watching me as he pulled away, he said to my sister, “What the hell is she doing?” My sister replied, “I think she's running.” And then they shared a hearty laugh.

6. Cheerleading encourages a positive attitude. For example: Let’s say someone just fumbled the ball. As a cheerleader, what do you do? The good cheerleader might break out with something like, “That’s alright. That’s okay. We can win another day.” Or whatever the hell it is good cheerleaders say. The example I gave was, “Nice going, butterfingers! Way to commit!” 

The powers that be saw two problems with my "cheer":

1) It didn’t rhyme

2) They found it to be a scooch too negative.

But hey, you can’t please everybody, am I right?

 

But nothing so clearly demonstrates how much you suck as a cheerleader quite like the humiliation of being followed by Debbie Spangler. I don’t know what that little dynamo was packing that day, but it was unearthly. Let me paint you a picture: Debbie's in the corner of the gym. She takes off runnin', and within 3 seconds she has back-handspringed, back-flipped, cartwheeled, roundoffed, herkeyed and spreadeagled herself across the room.

 

And on that day, in that moment, I stood up and walked out.

 

And that’s my (relatively) true confession.  

--molly

Saw an article on Yahoo today that Poltergeist is being re-released to celebrate 25 years of scaring the begeezuz out of us. I remember my Dad took my brother and sister to The Grove to see Poltergeist and DROPPED THEM OFF (they were 7 and 8 years old at the time) while he went next door to see Blue Thunder. He thought it would be okay because Poltergeist was rated PG (now, why he thought it would be okay to leave a 7 and 8 year old alone in a movie theatre is a totally different question altogether). My sister slept in my parent's room for 2 months! To this day (and she is now 32 years old) I can call her up and say, "Cross over children! All are welcome! All welcome! Go into the light!" And she will pee herself just a little bit. Sometimes, just for fun, I'll call her and I won't say anything. I'll just play that creepy music - you know the one where the kids are singing, "la la la la la la la la la.." I'll just let it play until I hear her yell, "I hate you!"  And then I laugh, and laugh! (maturity is over-rated)

Good times. Good times.  ;-) 

There are parts of that movie, I haven't seen to this day (because I still close my eyes). For example, that bathroom scene when the guy starts to scratch at his face - couldn't tell ya what happens there. Nope, no way, not going to watch it! Can't make me. No thank you!

--molly

This is a new feature of the reunion site and you can look forward to blog posts coming up this first week in October! We'll be adding video posts as a fun new feature as well so stay tuned. =) 
--molly