The other day I had lunch with two dear girlfriends I don’t get to see very often, women I met once I moved back to Phoenix. We talked about recent purchases at Last Chance, recent travels, and recent blog posts.

“Wow, you’re so brave!” one remarked over the post about Sophie’s experience at birthday parties and mine in high school that I’d put up earlier in the week.

Nah, I told her. Writing that piece wasn’t brave. But posting it on my Facebook page was.

Or maybe it was just dumb. Or even a little mean.

The truth is usually a little more complicated than a blog post. And when I started getting emails from classmates apologizing for being mean (if they were — they didn’t recall any incidents but wanted to say sorry just in case) and also some from others recalling good times we did have together in high school, I realized that although I did toss in a parenthetical about how I did in fact have some friends in high school, I probably shouldn’t have gone so far in general, in comparing my situation to Sophie’s.

Not that the comparison is wholly inaccurate.

The emails were fascinating. One classmate who would have been considered part of the “popular” crowd in high school admitted she hadn’t used the word geek in years, but thought it when she saw some of our nerdier classmates at the reunion, and was a little horrified at herself.

Another wrote something really lovely that he gave me permission to repost here. (He also told me I could rewrite it if I thought it needed it, which it most certainly does not.)

This is a guy who always struck me, looking back, as comfortable in his own skin — the thing I never was. Friendly to others (including to me, he reminded me we were on the school newspaper together, something I’d frankly forgotten) and an all around nice guy; Class Clown meets Guy Next Door. Certainly not someone I had the luck of hanging around with. 

I read your post, this guy wrote me on Facebook.

I too, was going to blow off the reunion as I didn’t feel like sharing the past 34 months of divorce, foreclosure, failure and insanity with my classmates. I went anyway, and it turned out to be fun in some ways, predictable in others, but in the end, another party. The difference this time was: At our 10 year reunion, we were still climbing, at our 20, it was more of a parade of things we had accomplished, at this one, it was an admission of “who the fuck cares” …. and if you remember my personality at all, this reunion was the most fitting for my C+ student, but socially functional brain to handle. If it wasn’t for football and dating [a cute cheerleader] as a sophomore, I don’t think I would have been a memory for many. It’s funny how all have our isolated defining moments, and really, it’s all front page news in our own brains, nothing more. Here today, gone tomorrow as something else takes it’s place and the water subsides, ripples come to an end. Narcissism continues and people fade into the soap operas of their lives that only exist between their own two ears.

Now that was a brave email to write. So was the one from the popular girl with the geek story.

The complicated truth — or part of it, anyway — is that I still have a lot to learn from Sophie. No, I wasn’t popular in high school. But even so, I had classmates I, too, deemed too geeky to befriend. I thought of that as I looked at pictures of the reunion someone posted on Facebook. I guess high school really is just one big hierarchy, a la The Breakfast Club.

It’s not that Sophie will befriend just anyone (I see her give the heave ho to people all the time, particularly doting adults) but she’d never turn someone down for being a geek. And, unlike her mother, she doesn’t hold a grudge.

This morning, Annabelle was balancing her cake for the cake walk carefully as we walked from the car to school, slower than the other groups. (OK, here’s a digression — how could anyone not know what a cake walk is?! Ms. X graciously provided a super explanation.)

As we headed toward school, I saw the future “bitchy student body president” and her dad, ahead of us on the sidewalk. I noticed the girl turn around, look at Sophie, sneer a bit, toss her head in the air and literally skip away. I wanted to catch up with that little girl and trip her. Sophie didn’t even notice.

 We got to school and Annabelle showed off her cake, and I forgot all about it. Sort of. I better not see that girl at the school carnival tonight. And no, I can already tell you that I’m not going to my 30th high school reunion.

 Not brave enough.