Remembering my classmates
I’m now going to rack my brain and try to remember some details about the lives I have glimpsed into over the course of one and a half days. I’ve got the reunion group picture in front of me, and I think I’ll just go from left to right, back row to front row.
Pamelais now in Boulder, Colorado, playing piano at a dueling piano bar. She is one of the few that has managed to escape the Midwest, to a place where the words elevation changes don’t require finger quotes. I hope that, when she releases her next record, she can go on tour and come to Ann Arbor so I can see her perform in person.
Terrence and Caterinaare both doing postdocs at WashU down in St. Louis. If I remember correctly, it’s for medicine. Caterina is currently pregnant with twins, and is due in early summer. Boy, with twins on the way, I wish the two of them the best of luck. Also, Terrence has awesome facial hair that could justify a career selling Oxi-Clean or appear on some survival-in-the-wild reality TV show. I can’t grow facial hair like that. Color me jealous as hell.
Mark is currently in DC working for the Federal Reserve. Like I always say, those who play with money make the money. That still applies to government work, right? He’s also got a Canon 6D that he just bought, and with the nifty 50 on it, took several hundred photos of the 20 of us over the course of the weekend.
Elaine is in grad school studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Despite the fact that she is just a stone’s throw (okay, more like a 45 minute drive) from Dearborn, I never made any effort to reconnect with her in the recent past. I did run into her at MASH one time, just as she was leaving the bar and I was headed to the dance floor, so we did exchange a pithy number of words a few years ago. She introduced Hannah to her current boyfriend Travis, who is also in Elaine’s CS program.
Clarabelle is in medicine. I don’t remember if she’s finished her residency, or if she’s practicing already, or even if she’s still in school. As Mr. Murhpy pointed out, when she graduated Uni, she looked like she was 12 years old; now she’s advanced in age to the point where she now looks like a college freshman. ‘Tis true, she is one of the lucky ones who must have a fountain of youth buried in her chest. She is in St. Louis, I think.
David makes robots and other cool things. He started swing dancing at the U of I before I did, and moved out to the West. He came back to Champaign and did some blues dancing with some folks that knew me back when I was still present in the Champaign blues scene. Like me, the amount of swing and blues dancing he does has been declining. That’s the real world for you…
Alisa works in DC for… hmm, I don’t remember, actually. What I do remember is that she is super excited to be traveling to GuangZhou to teach for a couple of months, and has been practicing her Chinese in anticipation of the trip. She’s a linguistic genius, so I’m sure she’ll do just fine when she makes it to China. There was much discussion on the places she should go see once she sets foot on Chinese soil.
Stephen is in grad school studying Russian history at the U of I. He just started the program in the past year or two. We laughed about the time when I was in town for an autocross, and I happened to find him in downtown Champaign as I was driving around in my Miata with the tire trailer and a set of wheels and tires locked in the back. He’s got about three years before he’s finished with school.
David is working as a computer programmer in New York City for the New York Times. He lives in Brooklyn, and is also one of the folks who managed to break free from the Midwest. I’m not going to lie, I’m a bit jealous, as I sometimes wonder what it’d be like living in New York. I also learned, through conversation between him and Clarabelle’s parents, that he used to troubleshoot their router. And Pamela noted that he built them (her mom, I think?) a computer. So yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
John is one of the few people I kept in touch with regularly after Uni. We still talk about all things engineering and concrete on a regular basis. I was his Best Man at his and Sarah’s wedding, so I need no reminders of who he is here…
Catherine currently lives in San Francisco and works for Google (along with Shang ). We talked briefly about real estate prices, because we’re boring adults now, and geeked out over film and old cameras for a bit as well. I think she came the farthest for this reunion.
Meera is currently studying neuroscience in grad school at UChicago. She’s in the same program as Mutka, in fact. I didn’t really talk to her, ever actually, back in high school, and I don’t know why. At the Union Food Court, while David was off buying some Wendy’s the other girls took a bathroom break, I bemoaned to her my lack of adventurousness back in high school, and the fact that there were many people I didn’t get to know very well that I should have. She reassured me that I didn’t miss much when it came to some of the high school antics. Ah, the power of perspective as time passes.
As I noted above, Mutka is in the same neuroscience program as Meera is. She brought her boyfriend along to the reunion, a fellow whose name now escapes me. She has been in the neuroscience program a lot longer than Meera has, but I don’t remember how much time she has left in the program. She also looks pretty much exactly the same as she did when she graduated high school.
Hannah is finishing up her residency in Ann Arbor. She brought along her boyfriend, Travis, to the reunion. They were introduced together by Elaine. I had forgotten what a ball of happy, sunshiney energy Hannah was, and it’s wonderful to see that 10 years has barely taken an edge off that energy. She will probably end up going somewhere else once her residency is finished. She is another person that is not too far from Dearborn, yet I had completely forgotten that she was in the area.
Emily is in Louisiana. I don’t remember exactly what it is that she is studying, but I do remember that she’s doing aerial wetlands mapping on the side, which I found fascinating. She’s about two hours outside of New Orleans, which is sadly the only reference point I have for the entire state of Louisiana. I reminded her of the time we went out to lunch years ago, and I talked shit about Miatas. Ironic, now that I have had two Miatas, one of which I’ve dumped a considerable amount of money into as an autocross car, and may be getting another.
Eli will be heading to Montreal, Canada, and may end up doing work as a carpenter. For someone who had one of the better, more stylish yearbook photos, it’s good to see that he is still irresistibly, ruggedly handsome.
Michael is the other person of the group that I regularly keep in contact with. He spent some time student teaching around East Central Illinois, including some work as a substitute teacher at Uni, before moving to the Chicagoland area to teach music on the south side of Chicago.
Andy and Natalie are currently in Champaign-Urbana. Andy’s got a business venture with a factory in China producing goods for Florida, and is working to become a DJ in his post-playing poker days. Suffice to say, Andy’s done a whole bunch of cool shit. Natalie is about to finish up school in urban planning, and the two of them are going to head down to Miami, Florida, when she’s got her degree. My conversations with Natalie were some of the most fascinating of the weekend; we talked about the urban renewal project affecting north Champaign, the relocation of Central High School, and the politics of Detroit that make the Windy City look like a light breeze on a bright summer’s day. Also, she’s got cool hair and the best taste in patterned pants, which makes her fucking rad as hell. Like with Meera, this was probably the most I’ve ever talked to her, including the high school years.
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