3rd Rock From The Library

[Weeeeeird. I've received two e-mails in two days from two friends from 7th grade from whom I've not heard since high school. It's my understanding that today, middle schools are the norm, 6th thru 8th grade. Well, back in my day, sonny, we had junior high schools, which were 7th and 8th only.]

[In Sonoma Valley, there were (I believe) six elementary schools whose kids all went to the same junior high and high school. When I arrived at Altimira Junior High, I had few friends from elementary school to be going on with, so I took my usual refuge in the library and hoped something would happen. My equally unpopular friend Jeff (who was a grade older) accompanied me thither, introducing me to a crowd of freaks and geeks who were my main social outlet that year.]

[We were the kids who would later wear black and listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees: you know, the creative types, who were still a little too young to embrace our freakiness and proclaim it to the world. What we did, do, though, was proclaim it to each other, in the form of a club. We posited an alien race, the Turgeons, from the planet Turgama, who were shaped like alligators but had unicorn horns and wings.]

[(I can't believe I'm admitting this to you: try to remember, this was 1981, when unicorns were on every folder and sticker a seventh grader who wasn't into Pee Chee or Van Halen might buy. The alligator was because Susanna and Damienne had a deep appreciation for The Official Preppie Handbook.)]

[(I just tried doing a Yahoo! search for the Handbook. Nothing! No one has done a commemorative site?!)]

[Anyway, we had a great time developing a mythology for the Turgeons, of which we were, of course the advance wave of colonization in temporary human form. (3rd Rock From The Sun avant la lettre?) It was a great way to close ranks against the hostility of that difficult age. By the next year, I'd developed other friends in other cliques (ooh, I advanced to band geeks and Dungeons and Dragons!!), and the Turgeons fell by the wayside. I never became the black-clad goth this early training indicated. Susanna and I remained close friends (go here to read a bit about our trip to Baja in 1996), but Stacie, Damienne and especially Jeff became...the past.]

[With the current crise de foi I'm having with some of my current friendships, these e-mails came at a very interesting time.]

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