I’ve been on FaceBook for a couple of years now.  When I joined there were mostly college kids and just a few emerging church types around.  For the longest time I had about 30 or so friends.  I’d gain a friend or so here and there and then I had 50.  And then my blogging network grew and I gained some more friends.  But still it was hit or miss.

Then the floodgates opened up.  Anyone could join FaceBook.  And they have.  O Mi Goodness.  Grandmothers (as in people old enough to be my mother) are on FaceBook.  And people from my long lost past have been finding me.  And I’ve been finding them.  It’s been a grand adventure.  Some particular joys have been finding friends from college.  I’ve been to a couple of high school reunions and I do hear news of those friends from home from time to time.  But college friends?  Well, when I left college, I was done.  In the words of Jesus, I wiped the dust off my feet and got out of town.   I thought I didn’t care if I never heard from anyone ever again.  But it turned out that I did.

Now I have.  Several in fact.  And I’ve been having a ball exchanging news of families and children and lives.  Not all is great news, of course, but it’s catching up with one another.  So that is good.  I may indeed have the courage to go to our 30th reunion in four years ;-).  Who knows, through the wonders of FaceBook, alot of colleges may see a ressurgence in reunion attendance.  That would be an interesting statistic to look at.

One thing I’ve noticed on many of my old/new friend’s profiles is attendance or notation of their 30th highschool reunions this year.  And realized … hah!  Mine should be as well.  Not that it will be, because our class (rather than an alumnae association) is in charge of such things and we’re notoriously unorganized and under-unified.  The class before us and after us … hyper-together.  Us?  Not so much.

In any case, it’s got me thinking about highschool too.  I don’t remember terribly much about highschool.   Most of you wouldn’t recognize my highschool experience.  I went to highschool in the mid to late 70’s at a school which was designed to be both experimental and experiential.  By the late 80’s it had morphed to a more traditional format, but when I was there it was fairly cutting edge in terms of educational theory.

When we didn’t have a class scheduled, we had free time and could do anything we wanted to do.  Literally, anything as long as we did not disturb another class that was in session.  We called our teachers by their first names (with only one or two exceptions).  We had a smoking lounge for kids who smoked.  We had a regular lounge to just hang out in when we had free time.  We could hang out in the library.  Or the science lab.  Or the art workshop.  Or with a teacher.  Or outside on the lawn if it was a nice day.

We had great class selections too.  Not your standard English classes … I remember a great class in science fiction one semester, another class in movie-making.  One year for science I took a hands on earth science class wherein we disproved the standing Vermont Geological Survey’s theory on the direction that the last glacier had taken through the state.  Our class’s Adamant Pebble Campaign was written up and published in Vermont Geological History.  That happened when I was in ninth grade.

All of it sounds fairly idyllic.  And some of the time it was.  For many of the students it was as well.  However, for many of my years in highschool my father was chairman of the schoolboard.  For all of my years there, he was on the schoolboard.  I love my dad.  I think my dad is pretty wonderful.  But those years were hell.  Because my dad is a stickler for fiscal responsibility and is financially extremely conservative.  The mid to late 70s were not years when any local community had a spare sou to rub together.  So he was probably a great person to have in charge of the school’s budget during those years.  But not if you asked the teachers.  Add to that the fact that he was a reformed smoker and he took the teachers smoking lounge away from them.  Many of the teachers were mature enough to be able to separate me, the student, from my father, the schoolboard chairman.  But there were many who could not, including a few who I had once been close to.

I don’t remember talking to my parents about it.  But I do remember wishing that my father would just shut up.  I could not figure out what drove him.  Why did he have to make such a stink?  Why couldn’t he just let it be?  Let the teachers have their stupid smoking lounge?  Let the budget go?  Didn’t he know how hard it was … how the teachers were talking (and falling silent when I came by) and looking?  Even the bus drivers looked sideways at me sometimes.  I think I might have asked my mom once or twice and she tried to explain.  But I couldn’t verbalize what was going on at school, and as I look back on it now, I’m not sure it was really that important.

Or was it?

I learned something really important from those teachers during those years.  It had nothing to do with readin’ ‘ritin’ or ‘rithmatic.  Those years were my first brutal lesson that the price of belonging is silence.

I’ve had to learn it over and over again since then, to be sure.  Most people prefer the status quo.  They want the easy road, the way things are or the way things have “always been done,” to change.  They prefer the wizard in the back pulling levers and their green spectacles, to having a full spectrum of color on their own.  When you point out the wizard … you will be expelled, you may be sure.

I’ve learned with my father that sometimes you have to speak.  You can’t not speak.  The price of belonging may be silence.  But, sometimes, that price is too high.