Squeeze-Me-Centennial

You can tell you’re getting closer to C'ville because suddenly the number of country radio stations triples, and every other song on the pop radio stations is by John (Cougar) Mellencamp.

I left KC at 4:30 a.m. to drive back to C'ville in time for the Sesquicentennial Parade. The parade had 200 entries (the committee had to turn floats away) and took 1.5 hour. My mom counted 79 tractors in the parade. There were maybe five family floats crammed full of the people who serve as the main numbers in C’ville’s population (such as “The U___ Family” filled with the U___ family members). I watched the parade with Mom and Jerry from my church’s pie booth. We thought that our family should have entered the parade as “The Dysfunctional Family – We Put the ‘Fun’ Into ‘Dysfunctional’.” It wouldn’t have been the same without Brett.

After the parade, I met up with my best friend from high school, Leah, and her boyfriend Brett. Leah lives in Iowa City and is getting her Masters in Nursing. We walked around downtown C’ville, where not a whole lot of action was going on, and then opted to drive out to Copeland Park where the mud volleyball tournament was taking place. This is where we found the majority of our former classmates and the population of C’ville. This is where the fun began. The climax of the sesquicentennial came that night, from 9 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. at the adult dance on the co-op slab.

I couldn’t recognize anyone. During the parade, I kept asking Mom and Jerry “Is that so-and-so? Were they in my class?” While watching mud volleyball, Leah, Derek, and I pointed at people and asked each other “Hey, is that so-and-so?” Most of my former classmates have gained weight. Ja___, who was hot in high school, is heavy and balding. He walked by us four or five times before John and Derek figured out who he was. Then again, not all of the weight gain is bad. My buddy Jeff (who used to climb trees and eat Oreo cookies with me) was short and slight in school. He’s still short, but he’s put on 50 pounds of muscle. He said my name three times and had to tell me who he was before I recognized him.

Leah unintentionally bailed on me. Leah told me that she and Brett were going to meet me at the dance, but they never showed up. This left me hanging out with my parents and being stared at by my former classmates.

My mom tried to pimp me out to Jason H___. For some reason, my mom has started hinting heavily about marriage. Jason is one of her favorites of Jerry’s former students; he’s nice, funny, articulate, smart, and a professor at a college in like Wyoming or Montana. He also graduated in the late 80s and is a head shorter than me. When he came over to talk to Jerry, Mom, and me, one of her first questions was why he wasn’t married, and she kept directing the conversation toward me. He and I chatted for maybe 15 minutes on our own. When he left, she expressed her disappointment loudly (“There goes a perfect guy. Too bad he wouldn't stay with you.”) while he was still within earshot. Thanks, Mom.

Those cows. The dance was a difficult event for me. Realizing that Leah probably wasn’t coming (I hadn’t brought my cell phone, so I couldn’t call her) and I was that loser who came with her parents, I panicked. Leah was supposed to act as my buffer between all these people. When I saw Ben come in, I knew I wanted to talk to him, so I surged forward into the crowd…and managed to lose him. Not an easy feat since Ben is a big guy. As I was standing in this crowd of people I knew back before I had become who I am now, no one said anything to me. I stood there alone for what felt like an eternity (but was probably five minutes), until John came up to me. So we chatted, and he helped me find Ben. Eventually, John (and Derek) became my touchback points: if I couldn’t find someone willing to talk to me, I would go to John and Derek, get my bearings, and move out again.

After John made that first contact with me, it was like I became safe for people to approach me – but only my male classmates approached me. Not one single girl I went to school acknowledged me. And it wasn’t that I was stuck up in high school; I was nice. Finally, I approached a group of them and said “hi”. They were okay; we chatted for a couple minutes, but then they just kind of let the conversation fall. Leah has had this happen to her before when back in C’ville. Brett’s theory is that they’re all still living in C’ville, married and pregnant, pudgy and unsuccessful, and resentful of Leah and me, who look much better than we did in high school. Whatever.

W___ and I discussed our elementary school crush. W___ was my first continual crush who actually liked me back. We used to play keep-away in fourth grade and write each other notes. Our crush was so crazy that our teacher, Mrs. Durham, told me that I needed to stop playing with W___ and Jason at recess. (NOTE: I was never the only girl playing with them and it was nothing dirty, you perverts.) He used to wear his hair cut short and occasionally smelled like his parents’ hog farm. He was an Iowa State fan, which should have been my first indication that our love was doomed.

At the dance, while I was speaking with a group of guys, W___ walked up to me. It was the first time I had spoken to him since high school, and in high school, we never really spoke to each other, just kind of indirectly through other people. I think his personality is a lot like mine: he’s quiet until you get to know him, and then you realize how funny and random he is. His hair is longer now and surprisingly curly.

Brazen after alcohol consumption, I asked him if he remembered me having a crush on him. His response: “How could I forget? Fourth grade, Mrs. Durham. I used to chase you around at recess.” (hee hee) We chatted about it for a while, and I became flustered. He promised me that he had thrown away all the “love” notes I had written him. I think I still have the notes from him in my bedroom in C’ville, so I promised I wouldn’t use them as blackmail at a later date if he went into politics. When I told him that I still thought of him on his birthday (January 13), it was his turn to be embarrassed. I reassured him that this is some weird thing I have with all my friends from elementary and high school; I pointed at the guys standing next to us and said their birthdays. Everyone was impressed.

W___ is living in the C’ville area, working as a welder. He was living with a girl who was a freshman when we were seniors. (The girl, M___, had gotten pregnant two years ago by another guy before moving in with W___, but then apparently it wasn't his kid.) While living with W___ , she slept with J___ and got pregnant. So, three guys, two babies. Good deal. I later saw him talking to M____, so maybe they’re hitting it while she’s pregnant.

I yelled at some guy for touching me and making comments on my height. While I was getting my fourth beer, some guy I had never seen before (dressed in faded denim Wranglers, cowboy boots, and a sleeveless denim shirt) said “Holy shit, you’re tall.” To which I responded “Like that never occurred to me before?” and walked away. He followed me for the rest of the evening, touching me and making comments on my height. Derek thought it was funny until the guy asked me to dance, I said no, and then he turned to Derek and asked if he was my boyfriend. I said yes. I went to stand next to John for the rest of the night.

This brings up the point that everyone in Correctionville is freakishly short. I was the tallest woman there, and most of my former male classmates were either eye-level or shorter than me. What the hell are they putting in the water?

John and I discussed my high school crush on him. When I was a sophomore and John was a junior, I was in love with him. It was pretty obvious. But we were good friends and I was, um, not really dating material, so I knew he would never reciprocate my feelings. So I gave up the crush. Sort of.

When John saw Leah, Brett (her boyfriend), and me at Copeland Park, I didn’t really say a whole lot to him at first. I don’t think I even said “hi”. Because all I could think was I used to be in love with you, and I bet you know that now. But after ten minutes of sitting next to each other, I warmed up to him.

Toward the end of the night, I blurted out something about liking him in high school. John told me that this was something he had just discovered less than a month ago, during a conversation with one of my sort-of friends in high school and a girl he kind-of dated. Either way, it was an awkward conversation for both of us, but I think it helped him understand why I was so quiet to him at the start of the day. (He said he did wonder why I hadn’t said hello to him. When I explained that it had also been four years since I had last seen him, and it took me a while to warm up to people, he said “We were such close friends in high school – why would our conversations change?” What a naïve country boy. He's also arrogant.) His knowledge of my crush might also explain why he had stuck his hand in my pocket earlier in the night and kept putting his arm around me. Not that I’m complaining. He’s still hot.

Derek and I spoke of our fear of marriage. Derek and I are similar in a lot of ways. Other than Slim and Leah, we were the only two people from our class who made a specific trip back for the Sesquicentennial. Everyone else that was there lives in the area, hangs out with the same people we went to high school with, and are all pretty much married or have children. At one point in the evening, we spoke about why he, Leah, and I are not married. It was an interesting conversation.

S___ groped me. Once I had seen Leah, John, and Derek, the only other people I wanted to talk to that were around were S___ and Ben. Before Josh got the nickname S___, we called him Chunk (think The Goonies). It was determined that that was too downright mean, so people started calling him S___ . S___ and I grew up in houses kitty-corner to each other; I used to joke that I could see him undressing in his room from my bedroom. (His bedroom was on the opposite side of the house from my house, but it still freaked him out.) S___ was desperately afraid of girls, and we used to tease him mercilessly. He came to visit Cassidy and me at The University of Iowa once; we took him to The Fieldhouse and bumped and grinded on him as he stood motionless in the middle of the dance floor, cursing at us.

As I was talking to Ben, S___ came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me and nuzzling his chin into my neck. I froze in horror and confusion as to who would be groping me in Correctionville (a new experience for me) until he spoke. I immediately recognized his voice, even though it didn’t feel like S___ . S___ is now, well, Slim. He’s about six-four and thin. He was drunk, slurring his words quite well. Since I had never drunk with my high school friends before, last night was a new experience for me. I discovered that S___ is a Close Talker when drunk. And the S___ who was scared of girls no longer is afraid of girls. Sweet.


C'ville cracks me up. It takes me a while to remember small town behavior, its eccentricities (such as the Farmer’s Wave everyone gives to each other while driving), and the people who live there. And I guess, when I go back, I should never drink. I talk a lot more, hence the two conversations about former school crushes and me telling s0meone “It’s okay, you can say that to my face, but I know you’ll say something different behind my back when I leave.” I was only half-kidding.