A Iss to Build a Dream On

A version of an old Louis Armstrong song,

A Kiss to Build a Dream On

played during the closing credits of a movie I watched a few weeks ago. I didn't catch the singer's name, but it wasn't Armstrong. The singer's voice didn't have Armstrong's signature gravelly rasp nor did the song feature Armstrong's trumpet during pauses in the vocals. The male vocalist's voice was smooth and soothing, in the style of a love song appropriate to the era the movie was set in. I admit to shamelessly filching the song title. The story does not parallel the song in any other way.

She wasn't my first kiss. But there weren't many before her. We met at a dance our high school held every year the Saturday before Valentine's Day. It was the only dance I went to while in high school.

The economy in the city where I grew up was wracked by the death of the primary local industry. The schools, police, fire department, public works, parks and recreation, essentially all city services and departments were woefully underfunded. I remember overhearing my parents talk about the financial problems the city, and by extension, the school system had. I can still picture the outdated, worn textbooks. My twenty-odd-year-old Physics textbook's cover and pages were no longer bound together and hadn't been for some time. The first night I had it, I went through it to put the pages in order. Fortunately, only a few were missing.

The high school student census was huge. Nearly four thousand students. One of the high schools, a huge, early twentieth-century brownstone and wood structure, burned to the ground when I was in eighth grade. The building was, of course, underinsured. Even though significant state funding was available, the city didn't seek to issue bonds to cover its share of construction costs. The Board of Education and city officials knew it couldn't service the debt. The Board of Education did the only thing it could to accommodate the number of high school students; it held double sessions in the remaining pre-Korean War high school building and leased some portable classrooms. Freshman and juniors attended classes from seven to noon. Sophomores and seniors attended classes from one to six. Even with double sessions and portable classrooms, the school, originally intended for about fifteen hundred students, was overcrowded.

I would have preferred to stay completely anonymous at school, but it didn't work out that way. Teachers held me in high regard. My classmates, however, did not. It was partly my fault but not entirely. For one thing, I got a chip on my shoulder once I learned how the rich kids in my classes would treat the poorer kids. I was not the only one that suffered their disdain and verbal abuse. I was a bit too proud of my academic capabilities and rarely hesitated to berate the rich kids if they stumbled when called upon by a teacher. To make matters worse, I didn't suffer fools well. I still don't but I've learned to be more diplomatic, and more importantly, learned to bite my tongue. I was mostly a loner in school but not outside of it. It was just that none of my friends were in any of my classes.

I was slim and clumsy. Some would say skinny and physically inept. I was average height. But by sophomore year, my feet were already sized to fit my eventual six-five frame and usually got in the way somehow. I sometimes heard my shoes called clown shoes. I never got a physical education grade above a C+, which kept me from four years of straight A's. I once overheard my father comment to Mom, after I crashed my bike and got a bit more banged up than they liked, that he sometimes worried I'd never learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. While he said it jokingly to Mom, there was an undercurrent of concern.

A late growth spurt the first year after high school was good to me, if you overlook the aches and pains that came with it. I grew more than five inches between graduation and Christmas and almost two more inches by the end of spring semester. I'd finally grown into my feet, greatly reducing my clumsiness. No one will ever call me graceful, but I no longer trip over my own feet. And Dad doesn't worry whether I can walk and chew gun.

After college, I worked as an employee for a while, but the company wanted a drone. I got tired of being stifled when I tried to accomplish something. I saved my money, wrote code in my spare time, and took the leap into entrepreneurship. I founded a business based upon an idea my former employer rejected. An idea my manager couldn't be bothered to consider. He never took the proposal from me when I tried to give it to him. Just dismissed it outright. My business grew quickly and the niche dovetailed perfectly into my former employer's primary competitor's business model. I was bought out for a princely sum. I'm not a billionaire but I don't have to work if I don't want to. It wasn't long before I identified another niche and started another business, which is also doing well. Another company recently approached me about a buyout. But for the moment, I'm sitting tight.

I was married for a bit more than twenty years, but it eventually fell apart. My ex-wife and I are on good terms. We just realized we were headed in different directions and couldn't travel our paths together. Or maybe just didn't want to put in the work to do so. We're both actively involved with our seventeen-year-old daughter and fifteen-year-old twin sons. We mostly cooperate where they're concerned.

I went to the dance that night because my parents insisted on it. I hadn't attended any other school dances. We only had one car and though I had a driver's license, my parents wanted the car that night. They dropped me at the dance. I complained bitterly about being forced to go but was especially unhappy because I was sure I was the only senior driven there by a parent.

I thought the girl standing against the wall with two girlfriends looked uneasy, maybe a little frightened. The three of them tittered amongst themselves nervously although I can't imagine how they could talk above the band blasting out an old Billy Idol song when I first saw her. The girl that caught my eye wasn't one of the great beauties at school. She was cute though. I watched her for a good half hour. She looked about nervously. Waiting. Hoping someone would ask her to dance. Eventually, I summoned the courage. She was a few inches shorter than me, slender with a still girlish figure. She was nearly flat-chested but had an attractive face, an easy smile and very nice legs. Wavy, shoulder blade length red hair gathered into an immense ponytail probably would have benefited from conditioner. Her clothing was much like mine. Meaning bought at a discount department store rather than one of the upscale clothing stores at a mall in a nearby city. I was so nervous I was nearly shaking when I asked her to dance. She hesitated long enough that I almost retreated. But she finally smiled, nodded her assent, and followed me onto the dance floor.

The two bands were mediocre, probably chosen more for affordability than talent. We spent most of the evening on the dance floor, taking a few breaks for snacks and something to drink. We couldn't talk much. Just enough to become companionable and get a sense we might become friends. But both bands were so loud that normal conversation was impossible. The bands alternated sets with only a couple minutes of relative quiet in between when we could actually hear each other. Even during the bands' breaks the room was loud from the hundreds of conversations.

Near the end of the dance, she pointed toward the rest rooms. I went with her and waited in the hallway. When she came out, she looked around furtively, smiled and grabbed my hand, pulling me down a dark corridor into the school. We ducked into an alcove leading into a classroom and before I really understood what was happening, she was looking up at me. Her expression suggested she was waiting for something. Though unsure, I leaned forward slightly. She closed the gap to meet me in a tentative kiss that soon had an unbridled enthusiasm I hadn't expected. We were both gasping when we broke that first kiss. She whispered something I couldn't hear, then took the initiative on an even more enthusiastic second kiss.

That was as far as things went. Before the second kiss ended, two teachers confronted us and led us away. The school had a zero-tolerance policy about wandering into the school corridors during a dance. I'm not sure where she was taken, but I was led to get my coat and then escorted outside, left under the watchful gaze of one of the cops working the dance. I was told to stay put until my ride, due to arrive soon anyway, showed up to drive me home.

All I really learned about her that night was her first name, Lindsey, and that she was a junior. I never had a chance to get her phone number. I think she told me her last name, but I couldn't hear it above the din. I'd never seen her before because we weren't ever in the building at the same time. Oh yeah, I also learned she was nearly as uncoordinated as I was.

The following week, I was the butt of numerous jibes about my awkward dance moves. One particularly cruel comment I overheard, followed by widespread laughter among the rich clique, was "Did you see Billy Taft at the dance? It was like watching a duck that got castrated then had a long stick jammed up its ass before getting pushed out onto the dance floor!" Lindsey's dance moves got rave reviews, too.

I never saw Lindsey again, though I tried to find her. No one I knew had any idea who she was. I asked a couple teachers, but they told me they couldn't share information about another student. A couple kids from my neighborhood that were juniors didn't know her.

I was surprised when I found the invitation to my high school reunion in my email and then a hardcopy invitation in my mailbox, a week later. I wondered how the organizers found me. Probably through one of those fee-based people finders. I live several hundred miles away from my hometown. I lost contact with hometown friends when I went away to college. Some went into the military. Others went to work. Some married young. A few went to college nearby and found summer jobs. Two summers I did co-ops with a company in a different state.

My twenty-five-year reunion should have been a couple years earlier. But the pandemic nixed plans for large gatherings. The invite conveyed two graduating classes were cooperating in organizing the reunion and would attend together at a popular wedding venue in a neighboring town. I dithered, leaning toward not going, but at the last minute logged onto the web site to make my reservation, payment, and provide a copy of my COVID vaccination record. Vaccination was a requirement for attendance. I'm not sure what prompted me to go. I don't have good memories of high school.

I arrived in my childhood hometown a couple days before the reunion so I could look around. I hoped I might connect with a few old friends. I hadn't been back since my parents moved to Vermont in 2001.

Much had changed but some things hadn't. The economy was much better because multiple companies moved into the area, enticed by state and local tax incentives, the availability of a well-educated and skilled workforce, and cheap industrial property that had been taken by the city for nonpayment of property taxes. Big-box stores and restaurant chains built on the outskirts of the city. Formerly undeveloped sections of town now held light industry and other businesses, shopping, condos, and housing developments. A handful of the local landmark businesses remained, including two family-owned restaurants that had been in business for over a hundred years.

The city now had two new high schools. My old high school, now a junior high school, appeared to have been gutted, renovated, and expanded.

The downtown was vibrant. A few banks, the post office, city hall, and the library remained. But everything else had changed. There was a new police station. Though the buildings were mostly unchanged, the entire downtown area was now small businesses that catered to a growing immigrant population. Many of the new downtown businesses were owned by the new residents. Restaurants, small clothing stores, a foreign-language bookshop, and specialty food markets catered to Spanish-speakers, and small communities of immigrants from some African nations. The old Woolworth's, empty for all of my youth, was now a Latin dance club called Palacio de Danza de Eduardo y María. It was good to see the positive changes even if it was so different from my earliest memories. When I left for college, downtown was a deteriorating, desolate ghost town replete with empty storefronts. The businesses that remained had struggled to survive. Many had not.

Much of my old neighborhood was gone. The tiny, single-family houses that lined several streets had been replaced by condos. The street I lived on still had all the same houses but looked more prosperous. The two and three-family houses were well-maintained now, attractively landscaped and nicely painted. When I left for college, they weren't decrepit but most needed paint and few of the houses had any landscaping, just grass and the big oaks and sycamores that lined the street. Many of the sycamores were gone but the oaks remained.

The reunion was scheduled to run from six to eleven PM on Saturday night. Just before seven, I arrived at DiOrio's Orchard, a huge event venue consisting of several interconnected buildings and a large covered outdoor pavilion. I found my way to the main entrance and then made my way to the appropriate room. Once inside, I noted the crowd was sizable.

Just inside the room, a table was set up for checking in attendees. Four people, none of whom I recognized sat at networked computer terminals. I gave my name to one of them. She smiled at me then typed.

"Welcome, William Taft. I'm Tammy Berman, Class of '96. Do you want your name tag to say William? Will? Bill?" she asked.

"Bill, please," I told her.

She punched a couple keys, typed and a label printer behind her spit out a label that read "Bill Taft, Class of '95". "Have a good time," she said as she handed me the name tag.

"Just out of curiosity, how many are attending?" I asked.

"It's a pretty good turnout. Nine hundred sixty-six RSVPs were received. So far, I think about six hundred plus spouses have arrived. I'd say near a thousand so far."

"Thanks, Tammy. I hope you're not stuck behind the table all night."

"Someone will spell me soon so I can get out there," she said with a smile.

I got a beer and wandered around for a while, hoping to find some familiar, friendly faces. Even with masks I had little trouble identifying several friends from my old neighborhood and visited with each for a bit. One offered to squeeze me in at his table, but I declined. The tables were set up for eight and ten were already squeezed in at his table. One more body would have been too much. Besides, I still wanted to wander.

I also ran into other familiar, if less friendly faces, too. Old animosities didn't resurface. Some just nodded and went on their way. With others, the exchanges were cordial, if a little awkward. "Hi. How ya been? What are you doing these days? Married? Kids?" Small talk that truthfully had little point.

I found it curious the kids that grew up with all the advantages only did okay. None complained about their lot, but none claimed great success, either. Many were divorced at least once. A few were teachers. Two were small town attorneys in private practice, both wearing ill-fitting suits. Another a loan officer at one of the downtown banks. A handful of nurses, male and female. One guy owned a battery store. Another managed a lawn and garden tractor dealership. Two were car salesman. Both gave me a business card and promised me a great price on a new car and top dollar for my trade-in. Several were real estate agents. I got cards from them, too. I told people I was divorced with three children and worked in IT without elaborating.

When I went to refill my beer, I ran into Mark Goncalves. Mark was a neighborhood friend. Kind of a goofball, he never seemed to take much seriously. He was a good athlete but not an athlete driven to excel. He only went as far as natural talent could take him. That still meant all-conference point guard on the basketball team. Highest batting average and best pitcher on the baseball team. Of Portuguese descent but the son of first-generation U.S-born parents, he excelled at what he called "futebol", which, of course, is soccer to us heathens with a misguided concept of football. Mark didn't apply himself at school, either. He was perfectly content to attend mid-level classes and earn C's and B's. But he worked hard for his father in the family landscaping business every summer from a young age. Mark now owned three garden shops and a commercial and residential irrigation systems business.

Mark and I talked for a good twenty minutes near the bar before he invited me to his table, telling me there were two empty chairs. I didn't know anyone else at the table when I sat but Mark introduced me to everyone already there, including his wife, Bianca, a diminutive beauty with black hair and dark eyes. After visiting for a while, and getting to know everyone a little, I decided it was time to get another beer and a plate of food. A familiar-looking woman was a few places behind me in line. By the time I'd filled my plate, I figured out who she was, despite not seeing her name tag.

Diana Foster was her name. She was lead anchor on the five o'clock news on a TV station that served the area where I lived. I rarely caught news at that time of day because I was usually still at work. What I did know about her was limited to what I saw of her on TV and what little I observed with a few brief glimpses while we made our way through the food queue. She was smart and articulate, tall, slender, had an attractive face. On air, she had an engaging personality, and a thousand-watt smile. Auburn hair was styled to perfectly complement her facial features. She was also briefly infamous at home for the unfortunate way she phrased a question when segueing the show from news to weather one winter evening. Though I didn't see it, some of my staff laughingly told me all about it the next day. I understand it went something like this:

"Don Allen is here with today's weather update and forecast. Don, whatever happened to the eight inches you promised to give me after dinner last night?" she asked with a smile.

Diana's male co-anchor's reaction was immediate; he almost choked trying to stifle his urge to laugh. Muffled laughter could be heard off-camera. Diana was briefly, but visibly, flustered when she realized what she had said. But she recovered quickly.

"But first, a word from one of our sponsors before Don reviews tonight's weather report and forecast."

The station cut away to a commercial to give everyone in the studio a minute to regain their composure. When the show returned, Don reportedly grinned from ear-to-ear all through a weather report that promised bitter cold and brisk winds. Diana closed out the show like nothing had gone wrong while her co-anchor looked down and shuffled his notes in a futile effort to avoid showing the smirk he still couldn't suppress. I can only imagine the release of laughter that must have taken place after the show was off the air for the night. All-in-all, it sounded like a legendary live, on-air gaffe. I never looked for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone posted it on

YouTube

.

I went back to the table and was just about to dive into my plate when the empty chair next to me pulled out and someone sat down. I turned to look and was surprised to see Diana Foster. She greeted Mark, Bianca, and two others at the table warmly and by name. Mark introduced her to the others at the table, leaving me until last.