Monte Vista Class of 1988 Reunion

Jump in a time machine, set course for the year 1988

Walking across Monte Vista's campus with my longtime friend Ted on Friday, I flashed back to a memory from my sophomore year in high school. It was a perfect, sunny Friday afternoon in late May, and I was walking with another student to go to seventh period PE, the last class of the week. Ever the movie geek, I was looking forward to getting on with the weekend, so Ted and I could jam over to Crow Canyon Cinemas right after the final bell and catch an opening day matinee of Poltergeist II: The Other Side. I mentioned this to my classmate.

"Dude," I inquired, "are you gonna go see Poltergeist II tonight?"

 "Uh, no," he replied. "I'm gonna get drunk."

Good times. At age 38, I don't remember much about Poltergeist II (something about a demonic tequila worm?)—and I suspect my classmate remembers even less about that night's bout of binge drinking. But I so clearly remember that moment on the way to PE, with the weekend, the last day of school, graduation, and the real world still in the future. A lot of little moments like that pop into mind when I think about the mid-1980s and my four years as a student at Monte Vista High.

The reason I'm waxing nostalgic is that my 20-year reunion took place this weekend, and it was a pretty spectacular experience—simultaneously hilarious, nostalgic, and highly surreal.

Hindsight reminds me that Monte Vista was (and still is) an outstanding public high school. I had fantastic teachers—Mr. Lindberg (Geometry), Mrs. Brickley (English/Contemporary Literature), Mr. Strand (Civics), Mr. Marshall (U.S. History), Mrs. Shackelford (Math Analysis/one semester of Calculus), Mrs. Hoffman-Carothers (Anatomy/Physiology), Mrs. Pellom (Journalism), and many others. Monte Vista offered an SAT prep class that helped raise my scores considerably, which helped get me into UCSD, which allowed me to live in La Jolla for four years, which is something I'd recommend to any 18-year-old. But even though I do keep in touch with two dear friends from Monte Vista—Ted and Bud (I'll leave out last names, if for some reason people don't want to be blogged about)—those high school days do seem like a long time ago.

The reunion comittee, headed by Class of '88 president Marybeth, did a sensational job organizing the events this weekend. Friday was a low-key picnic on the MV campus, with kids and spouses welcome, and whoever wanted to attend could stop by, catch up, see the old stomping grounds, and head over to the varsity football game against Livermore. Saturday was the bigger bash, at a ballroom at the Hotel InterContinental in San Francisco.

Things have changed on the campus. When we first started at MV, there was still a student smoking hall by the gym. Now there's a swimming pool behind the gym. There are two-story classroom buildings. And a new picnic area behind study hall/lunchroom that sold those soft pretzels I'd sometimes eat for lunch. That's where a dozen-or-so Class of '88ers met up to kick off the big reunion weekend. It's quite a trip to see people who have fallen off the face of the earth since our graduation ceremony in June, '88. As soon as we arrived, Sami (who we knew from Stone Valley Intermediate, and Monte Vista) ran over and gave us a hug.

I immediately recalled the time Sami, who had been a pep rally chairman, asked me if I would pose as "Mr. Monte Vista" at a rally. See, I weighed about 75 pounds in the 10th grade, and she thought it would be funny if I strutted around the gym in front of the entire student body with my shirt off, flexing nonexistant biceps. I told her no way in hell I would do that. Turns out it was pretty funny, twenty years later.

Twenty years later, Sami's post-MV story is remarkably similar to a lot of people I reunited with. She went off to college, moved away, got married, had kids....and decided to move back to Danville. I must have met 15 people who are raising their familes in Danville or San Ramon. Every single one of them mentioned how being a parent in this area has made them appreciate how nice it was when we were kids.

The Friday night football game was fun, but the main event was Saturday night at the Hotel InterContinental in San Francisco. Bud, Ted, and I and signed in and put on our name tags. I overheard someone in line behind me say, "Wow, I wasn't this nervous the morning of my wedding." That's about how I was feeling, without having actually experienced wedding day jitters (looking forward to that sometime in 2009.) High school had away of reminding you that you're not as cool, good looking, or as popular as you wish you were. 20 years later, and I get to add a receding hairline to that equation. Delightful.

I walked into the reunion and looked around. Strangers. Some 200 nearly-fortysomethings were gathered in packs, many around two bars set up in the InterContinental ballroom. A DJ was blasting '80 music. A slide show of photos from our high school days was projected against a wall. I ordered a Manhattan/rocks, took a sip, and got ready to reunite. Right away I saw Bill, a great guy from back in the day and went over and said hi. He told me that our friend Jim, a guy I went to Cub Scouts with, couldn't make the reunion. Then I saw Chris, a buddy who, in college,  hooked me up with Letterman tickets because he remembered what a nut I was in high school for Late Night. My anxieties melted away. This was fun.

Every time I turned, I ran into someone I hadn't seen in two decades. It was like being in a combination time warp/pinball machine. I talked with Penny, Dorie, and Mary—three classmates from Monte Vista, Stone Valley Intermediate, and Alamo Elementary—a SRVUSD trifecta! We'd been in kindergarten together, more than 30 years ago.  I talked to Julie from Alamo Elementary, about our days in the fourth grade, her three children, and how Diablo's Faces photographer recently took her picture at a Danville Children's Guild fundraiser. I shook hands with Dave, who once ditched 6th and 7th period with me to go to an afternoon A's game, at which catcher Ron Hassey hit a walk-off shot. I was surprised at how good everyone looked. I was relieved that there were a few other receded hairlines.

The first hour of the reunion was an absolute blast. But as I kept looking over at the slide show projection, it reminded me of some kind of fountain of youth magic mirror from a Disney movie (Sleeping Beauty?) We were so young in those pictures. The images were jarring. We were babies then. Now, my lower back hurts. Observing the crowd of middle-aged former classmates, the second hour at the reunion took on a different feel than the first. More existential and melancholy. I thought about a few dear friends from childhood who hadn't been able to come. Jim from Cub Scouts. Ray from Dapplegray Lane. And Doug, my very best friend from kindergarten, who passed away in the early 1990s. I wanted to see them, tell them how much their friendship meant to me.

Meanwhile, I started talking to classmates who I didn't recognize and never knew in high school. These conversations weren't as warm and fuzzy as the Alamo School flashbacks, but fascinating nonetheless. We talked about the social cliques and dramas of high school, the feelings we got arriving at Monte Vista every morning. That the theater building and campus looked like some kind of giant cement fortress from a sci-fi movie set in an oppressive future. As the 80s music pumped at increasingly unbearable decibels, I had to sit down and soak it in, watch people dance and hug and buy each other drinks.

A subject everyone seemed to be talking about  was the social networking website Facebook. We didn't have Facebook, or Myspace, or Netflix in the '80s. Hell, the Internet wasn't even on our radar back then. Neither were cell phones, e-mail, Nirvana, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, the OJ Simpson trial, Florida 2000's butterfly ballots, Dubya, 9/11, Dick Cheney shooting his friend in the face, Survivor, American Idol, Sarah Palin, or Barack Obama. A lot has happened since Poltergeist II. As I'm writing this, I'm watching the end of Taxi to the Dark Side, the Oscar-winning documentary about treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Heavy stuff. But none of that came up at the reunion—all the conversations focused on fond, back-in-the-day memories and what we're doing now, how old the kids are, how we now know how good we had it back then. It was nice to be in a pleasant bubble of nostalgia for a few hours, and no one wanted to pop it with, "Hey, how bad is this economy? And, by the way, what about Hurricane Katrina?"

Finally, I got a second wind, and got back into the spirit. One thing about the class of 1988 that hasn't changed—we love to party. Some people were pretty hammered by 11:30 or so, and the party spilled down to the lobby bar well past midnight. But on my way out, I saw Jen, who said some really nice things about how she enjoyed sitting with me in Mrs. Shackelford's math class. I told her I had seen Mrs. Shackelford fairly recently at the Warren Eukel Teacher Trust Dinner at Diablo Country Club. Jen wants me to tell Mrs. S. how much she loved her math class, if I see her again. What I should have mentioned to Jen, but I'm just remembering now, is that another of Mrs. Shackelford's students gave her some props in a story I did for Diablo a few years ago. His name is Leroy Chiao, he attended MV a few years before us and went on to be an astronaut. I set up an interview through NASA and talked to Leroy when he was floating around a space station! He mentioned Mrs. Shackelford as a favorite teacher. He also mentioned that the night before he and a Russian astronaut watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail on dvd in the space station. Awesome.

As the party spilled out, I had a chance to thank Marybeth for doing such a great job organizing the reunion, and for being a terrific class preisdent, back in the day. Ever the diplomat, Marybeth credited reunion planning company ClassEncounters for doing the heavy lifting, the reunion committee for the creative ideas, and Nancy K. for putting together the dvd of high school photos. If Marybeth was running for US President on November 4, I'd pull the lever for her in an instant. But then she'd have to go live in Washington D.C., and it seems like Marybeth and her husband and two sons are very happy living in Danville.

After I left Monte Vista, I went to UCSD, and spent the next decade as a happy-but-poor vagabond. I worked at a sports resort in Guam, lived in Sydney for awhile, and spent a year hiking the Grand Canyon National Park. That's where I decided I wanted to be a writer, and was lucky enough to get some stories published. I've been on the editorial staff at Diablo magazine since 1999, right back in the area that was so good to me as a kid. Seeing as there are so many Class of 1988 grads living here in the East Bay, I'd love to hear from you about this are: Where do you like to go out to eat? What is this area missing? What are the best family activities? You guys can be a great generator of story ideas. Please keep in touch: pcrooks@maildiablo.com. And if anyone has any cool flikr streams of reunion photos, send me the links!

One more thing: I got the feeling a lot of people there were sorry that this kind of good time had to be such a once-in-a-blue-moon experience. For those of you living in the area, let's have another reunion this Saturday at Diablo's Gourmet East Bay party in Walnut Creek. There's going to be killer food and drinks, a live band, and a guaranteed good time. Proceeds go to East Bay food charities. Click here for more information. I'd love to raise another glass with the class of '88!

Posted at 01:59 PM in Pete's Popcorn Picks | Permalink