I just returned from my 30th high school class reunion in San Diego. The best part of the weekend was laughing with three of my closest friends from that time. We laughed till our guts ached and tears streamed down our faces. We chortled over silly things that only we would find funny. And we laughed about things that would have made our parents shudder if they’d known about them.

Like the time we headed to Tijuana for a night of disco hopping and,in a pot-induced stupor, piled into a windowless “serial killer” van driven by a pair of strange Mexican men. Promising to take us to a hot party, they instead took us on a harrowing two-hour ride through the city’s back streets. Slowly, it sunk into our foggy brains that there was no party and we had no idea where we were or who we were with. Two of us— yes, one of them was me — began crying hysterically, certain that our lifeless bodies would be found in a Tijuana ditch.

Apparently our sobs did the trick because our “captors” suddenly couldn’t get us back to our car fast enough.

Though we can look back and laugh at such reckless escapades now, high school wasn’t a happy experience for any of us. A sense of not fitting in drew our quirky little circle of friends together. Each of us was lost or struggling in her own way, a fact our parents seemed oblivious to. So we found our own ways to cope.

My friend, Sydnie, stuffed herself with food to dull her depression. Holly, an over-achieving honor student, battled anorexia in her quest for perfection. Sandy spent more school hours surfing than she did on campus. And I turned to alcohol to ease my low self-esteem and shyness.

At the reunion, we marveled at how clueless our parents had been about what we were up to. We wondered if their lack of awareness was typical of most parents in the more laid-back seventies. Or were they simply too enmeshed in their own problem—crumbling marriages, alcoholism, unemployment, single parenthood — to pay attention to ours?

We are all moms ourselves now. Our kids range from preschoolers to college students. I know none of us want to believe we could ever be so blissfully ignorant of what’s going on in the lives of our children. But I also appreciate how challenging it can be to stay close and connected -- even in the healthiest families.

With the help of each other, my friends and I survived those difficult years. We went on to deal with our individual demons. We came out laughing on the other side of high school.

By Dorothy O’Donnell

Labels: Dorothy O'Donnell

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