Reality Bites for the week of April 19

April 1986 – 20 years ago Рseems like yesterday and yet so far away
I‚Äôve never asked him, but I wonder if my father thought the same thing, twenty years ago 

In April of 1986, like me today, he was 38 years old and coming up on his 20 Year High School Reunion.
Surprisingly enough, it doesn‚Äôt bother me as much as it might some others.  The old clich√© about going back 20 years later rolling up in a Ferrari and playing the big wig, while funny at one point, isn‚Äôt even remotely appealing anymore.

   For a number of reasons over the next several weeks, mostly therapeutic, I am going to write about my life from 1986 to today.  Some stories will be more revealing than others and others still won‚Äôt make any sense to the reader.  Who knows, maybe you‚Äôll enjoy the stories and they will make you think of your own memories from that time and take a journey with me, who knows.
It was April and I had just a month before turned 18 and moved out of the home I grew up in and into a new home with my parents while coasting into graduation as a senior at Somerville High School.  I knew that by moving and graduating I would lose most if not all of the friends I had grown up with on Madison Street and it would take a while longer before the crowd I was close with on Woodbine Street where we hung out would fade off into marriage and careers and whatnot.
    I had fun in High School and I know a lot of people who didn‚Äôt and that‚Äôs a shame.  I was lucky enough to have several different groups of friends in school and I spent a lot of time with a girl I had met in Mr. O‚ÄôBrien‚Äôs Business class (I had a lot of electives to take my Senior year).  A lot of time, indeed.
    It wasn‚Äôt much of a secret (not that many people cared) that Sylvia was my defacto girlfriend.  She came from a very strict family, whose father wasn‚Äôt about to let her start dating as a Junior in High School and to be honest, I wasn‚Äôt ready to give up playing basketball every day after school and hanging out with my friends.
     But man was she different than any girl (or ahem, older woman) I had gone out with before.  By the time the Prom rolled around and I was informed I had to have dinner with her father to ask him for permission to take her, I knew she would be a part of my life for a long long time.
      So the Prom came and went and I graduated and the silly self imposed ‚Äúno girlfriend while in the same High School together‚Äù rule I had imposed on myself was no more.  Attached at the hip doesn‚Äôt come close to her and I.  She was my age, but a year back because her birthday was in September, so she would be a senior the next year.
      We spent a lot of time together ‚Äì alone, with her friends, with my friends and with our families.  Sylvia was very kind and loving person who was comfortable to be with and who loved to laugh.  She was as beautiful as she was goofy at times and very smart about some things other times and very na√Øve about the world and life ‚Äì and that was okay, because we had each other.
It was evident we loved each other very much after a year of getting to know each other and spending incredible amounts of time just doing nothing really but sharing life and learning about what life has to offer people.  We were the other‚Äôs first true love.
       Eventually her father relented and allowed his daughter to spend more and more time with me ‚Äì out doing things ‚Äì I was trustworthy and he knew that.  I was a well-mannered person with goals and dreams and the intelligence and the ability to get things done.  He knew, like everyone else around us, that we were meant to be together.
      It seemed like that year and a few months flew by all of a sudden it was time for her Senior Prom and soon after her graduation.  We talked about getting married, but kept it to ourselves, not wanting to seem presumptuous about our future.
      In two weeks I will talk a little about what else was happening during this time and what laid ahead for me and my life‚Ķhopefully I won‚Äôt lose you.