by James Wallace Harris, 7/2/23
Ed Czlapinski is a guy I knew in high school. I last heard from him about fifty years ago. A while back, an “Ed Czlapinski” left a comment here on my blog. I thought, “Could that be the same guy?” So I googled his name and discovered there are several guys named Ed Czlapinski out there. I called my old friend Jim Connell and told him about the comment. Connell also knew Ed after me. We both thought it was fantastic that a guy we hadn’t seen in decades could accidentally pop up on my website. I doubt Ed looked me up, there are just too many Jim Harrises in the world. But Ed kept posting comments and it indeed turned out to be the Ed Czlapinski of our memories.
Ed, I hope you are amused that I’m using you for the topic of this essay. It’s really going to be about remembering people from high school and remembering people in general, but then that’s a favorite topic of yours too.
My 50th anniversary of graduating high school was in 2019. In 2018 I started thinking about going to the reunion. Ed Czlapinski was the classmate I hoped to see most. But I didn’t go, and it turns out from his comments Ed didn’t go either. Evidently, we are having our reunion here.
Back in 2018, I thought a great deal about going to the reunion. I joined Classmates.com and studied the 1969 yearbook they had online for Miami Killian High School. It was an intense dive into old memories and it inspired the essay, “How Accurately Can I Remember 50 Years Ago?“
With the return of Ed Czlapinski, I’ve been thinking once again about my high school days. This time I’ve been even harder on myself by digging into my personality. I have found over my lifetime that about half the people I know fondly remember high school and half could only remember hating it. My friend Linda, who also graduated in 1969 did go to her high school reunion and she had the kind of experience I wished I could have had. Not only did she meet with her senior-year classmates, but she had a reunion with her first-grade classmates. I was incredibly envious of her.
I went to three 1st-grade schools, three 7th-grade schools, one school for 6th, 9th, and 12th grades, and two schools for all the other grades. I only attended Miami Killian High School for three months of the 11th grade, and all of the 12th grade. For most of that time, I was working 25-33 hours a week at a grocery store after school. I participated in no after-school activities or attended any school events because as soon as I got off from classes I rushed to Coconut Grove to work at the Kwik Chek.
I realized I didn’t go to my high school reunion back in 2019 because I could only remember the names of four senior classmates: Ed Czlapinski, Steve Miller, James Keith, and Linda Hodges, out of around eight-hundred seniors that graduated that year. I could only remember the name of one teacher, Mrs. Charlotte Travis. I would have gone to the reunion if I had known she would have been there. She was my favorite teacher in my K-12 career.
This past week while contemplating writing this essay I’ve thought deeper and deeper about what I must have been like in high school. My picture wasn’t in the yearbook. I didn’t attend my graduation ceremony. I remember now how I refused to participate in anything school-related activities. I remember walking down the outer hallway and the principal coming up to me and screaming at me, his face inches from mine, and walking away completely indifferent and detached. (He hated my long hair.) I loved my English class with Mrs. Travis, and I loved my Creative writing class, with a teacher I’ve forgotten. Ed Czlapinski was in both of those classes. In my four other classes, I refuse to participate in class, did no homework, and passed them simply because I sat in class and listened to pass the tests.
Why was I like that? I remembered that I also quit my job that year because they demanded I wear a costume the week of Thanksgiving. I was dating a girl who worked at the store, and my quitting ruined that relationship. Why was I such a butthead? My mother was furious with me for quitting my job. My parents grew up in the depression and believed you should never quit a job.
I was very unhappy with the world. I was fighting with my retired Air Force dad over the Vietnam War. My parent’s marriage was going through its worst meltdown (there had been others.) The world just sucked in 1968 and 1969 and being a butthole teen was my way of dealing with it.
Yet, I remember being happy during that year. Isn’t that weird?
My coping method for dealing with alcoholic parents and being moved around the country every year was to become intensely selfish and introverted. I had two friends outside school, Jim Connell and George Kirschner. And I had science fiction and rock music. And I loved the space program. One of the few special things my father ever did for me was to take me, Connell, and George, to see the launch of Apollo 8 around Christmastime 1968.
The reason I don’t remember my classmates at Miami Killian Senior High is because when I was in school I mostly kept to myself and thought about what I’d be doing after school. I would go to class — I didn’t skip them. And I enjoyed listening to the other students talk before the teacher came in, and sometimes I might say something, but I don’t remember saying much.
I remember talking with Ed some, but the main reason I remember Ed is that whenever he walked into a classroom he would go over to the chalkboard, draw a rectangle in the upper-right corner, and print in a quote. Sometimes I’d go to classrooms I didn’t attend with Ed, and one of his quotes would be up on the board. It was Ed’s version of Kilroy Was Here. Ed made himself memorable.
Ed dressed so he looked older like he was in college. He engaged in conversations. He had opinions and often talked about things he had done. He tried to convey he was mature and experienced. However, he always seemed somewhat nervous, so I figured things weren’t what they seemed. Ed, I hope you elaborate on my impression. But Ed made an impression that Connell and I have talked about all these years. I doubt my classmates remember me, but I bet many remember Ed.
This is not the first time that Ed Czlapinski returned to my life. I moved away from Miami in August 1970. I think I might have run into Ed at Miami Date Junior College in our Freshman year (1969/1970), but that memory is vague. I think he told me he was writing for an underground paper. I vaguely remember him saying it was called The Daily Planet. (Now there’s another story for you to tell, Ed.)
Then a few years later, Connell called me and told me he had met Ed again. He had been away to college in Gainesville, and I think Connell told me he came home and Ed living at his mother’s house. That’s another story for you Ed. That was a big surprise. Sometime later, when I was visiting Connell at his mother’s house, Ed showed up with some friends. Ed had left a VW Karmann Ghia in Connell’s backyard. We all went out there to get it started. The car’s tires were all sunk in the sand. I have a memory of all of us guys lifting it out of the sand, but is that even possible? I think that was the last time I saw Ed. I may have talked to him on the phone one time after that.
I know Ed stood out in high school, but why didn’t any of my other classmates? I have a few memories of Bruce Miller and James Keith, but they were from outside of school. I remember Linda Hodges coming to my house once, but she was really my sister’s friend.
Even though I was an introvert I wasn’t shy. I had no trouble talking to people, although I think I mostly listened because quite a few memories I have of high school are of people telling me stuff. I don’t remember their names — but I do remember them telling me personal things.
Now that I’ve spent so many hours thinking about it, I don’t think I allowed myself to get involved with my classmates. I think my lifelong experience of always moving once a year taught me that people came and went. I don’t think I made an effort to make bonds. I regret that.
I’ve always wished and fantasized about having a normal life, or at least what I thought imagined was normal. It would be like Linda’s, where I lived in one house my whole childhood, went to the same schools every year, and had a cohort of friends and acquaintances that developed over the years.
What I wanted was an Our Town childhood. I don’t know why, because that story kills my soul. Just thinking about it waters my eyes and stuffs up my sinuses.
Like the play, I wonder about going back as a ghost to haunt myself in 1968 and 1969 at Miami Killian. Thorton Wilder warns against returning. Thomas Wolfe says we can’t go home again. But I would try.
Looking at the photos in the 1969 yearbook I’m shocked by how young we look. My memory of Ed from 1969 has him looking ten years older than the photo.
When I flip through the yearbook I’m also shocked by all the activities and events that I ignored. One picture showed students with a wall-sized computer. I would give anything now to have worked with computers back then. Of course, I started computer classes at a tech school in 1971, so it would have only been a two-year headstart, but that would have meant a lot. I first learned about computers in 1968 when my dad briefly took a course and he explained about punch cards to me one day.
Ed, do you think about Killian very much?
Do any of the rest of you think about the past like I do?
Now that I’m old and my memory is acting up I find I’m dwelling on what I can remember and what I can’t. I feel like I’m Philip Marlowe on a case looking for clues. I know not to trust memories. I know that I’m revising memories by recalling them. I know I would go back in time even though Thorton Wilder warns against it because wanting to know what really happen is more important than enduring the suffering.
Ed, I hope you don’t mind me using you for this essay. I believe you are also obsessed with memory. And, if memory serves me right, I think you once told me you used me for one of your stories.
I wonder if between the two of us if we could validate any specific memories? Do you know anyone else from that time?
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 