From Medford, New Jersey
by Cindy Weinstein
There’s an unusual component to the traditional high school yearbook. Typically, there exist tributes, highlight reels, teacher, staff and student profiles, clubs, organizations, and sports categories. Also contained is a competitively odd feature casting graduating classmates into “Best” or ”Most” roles. Personally, I never ‘got‘ this. My innate sensitivities could not/would not bear the thought of someone possibly being perceived as less than for not having ranked the innocuous title of “Class Chatterbox” or the heralded “Best Looking.”
And through the years, I’ve wondered about the young men and women of my senior class, now my middled-aged peers. Is a designation (in time) a (fair) representation of ourselves? In those tender teen years, often replete with overwhelming insecurity and self-deception, do “Most” or “Best” descriptions boost the way we truly see ourselves or how we believe others perceive us? Are definitive labels subconscious mandates, dictated by our peers, along with numerous other monikers assigned to us by supposedly well-meaning parents, teachers and authority figures? Are these titles the embodiment of a psychological contract we must inevitably fulfill...or do we get to choose?
Truthfully, I haven’t a clue. No answers, save the discovery of my own painful (and joyful) life lessons culled from future years expressed over time. And most assuredly, what fellow students may have thought about me, remains undoubtedly, a construct of my own making. Inherently introverted, reflective and wistful, a steadfast invisibility served my purpose. Throughout school years particularly, I became clearly cognizant of my strange ability to fade into peripheral backdrops. Never sure if my presence registered, my conundrum lay in longing to fit in while at the same time cherishing my inner introspective, guarded world.
As years passed, personal successes accumulated, loving relationships evolved, milestones in marriage and childbirth emerged and technologies arose in time to record valuable memories. Fast forward to the advent of social media, and now I could tremulously stoke my long-held curiosities by reaching out to the one school ‘girl’ who serendipitously shared my birth date and year, the girl voted ”Best Looking,” the girl who had never ‘recalled’ me.
I private messaged Amy through Facebook. Feeling compellingly brave, I connected, on a hunch, a whim and resigned myself to rejection or neutrality if it unfolded as such. Sweet, encouraging replies came in, “never too late to make a new friend” and “maybe we should celebrate (our birthdays together).”
One year later and prior to our mutual birthdays, Amy suggested a meet-up. This past June, as Amy and I sipped Penn Station Pinot Grigio and rambled through thirty-seven years of topics, she generously permitted me to inquire as to her high school ‘title’, her comfort with it, any things/qualities we collectively missed, how she felt about my desire to connect, and what she has learned since then….
Amy’s reflections: “I never thought of myself that way. I wanted people to see in my eyes that my heart was where the beauty was.”
I learned to love with an open hand and I learned that I have a great new friend, Cindy. I learned every day is my birthday as long as I’m healthy. I am grateful for what I have.
And I’ve learned, as well. Invisibility carries risks; it mimics a diminished identity, constricted by a self-imposed, stifling safety net. These wisdom years continuously feed the self-discovery process, including those flawed characteristics and quirks we’ve hopefully come to accept. Freeing ourselves within life’s disheveled beauty, we ultimately come to meet one another, sans labels, where we are.
Cindy Weinstein currently holds a bachelor’s degree in special education and has worked primarily with the deaf preschool and elementary population. She feels grateful for having witnessed, on numerous occasions, the unique gifts and talents offered by the students in her care. Cindy is our ground reporter for Medford, N.J.