With the exception of one individual that I am friends with on Facebook, I actually go to considerable pains to avoid friending people that I have gone to secondary school with on social media. Around the time that my ten-year class reunion would have taken place, I also went to concerted lengths to “lay low” on social media (again, particularly Facebook) in the hopes that none of them would attempt to reach out and contact me, seeing if they could get me to attend something — the answer would have been a polite but firm “no, and please do not contact me for these purposes again,” and I probably would have blocked the individual that sent me this message. (I also began perusing Facebook to see if any “Class of 2004” groups had popped up with my high school’s name in them to see if it would just be easier to block people that way, and was actually relieved to see that one had not. Other classes had groups for their ten-year reunion, though.)

I don’t actually see myself changing my mind on this whole “don’t friend any more of these people” stance.

At the end of my graduating year, I actually turned an on-again, off-again boyfriend in for making comments that he would bring his father’s gun to school and “shoot up the freshman class because they annoyed him”. The school found out that his father owned the exact make and model gun that I had told them he mentioned (which lent a lot of credibility to what I had told them), and after talking to him, were concerned about his mental state. However, his parents intentionally stonewalled the investigation by nearly immediately withdrawing him from attendance as a student with the intent to homeschool him for the rest of time that he would have spent in public school “so that this wouldn’t go down on his permanent record and ruin his life,” not even letting the school complete the investigation that they had been working on. This really bothered the school, because this was seen as an intentionally evasive maneuver, and they were right — they couldn’t continue the investigation, or do anything further about it, if he were no longer a student. All they could do would be to call the police on him if he did follow through on his threat and show up on campus at the end of the school year with the gun (and he had been clear as to when he wanted to do this, which was something else that I told the school). I was told all of this by the principal herself when she told me the results of the investigation and how this boy’s parents had intentionally stymied it. It was around this point that I just wanted to graduate and want nothing else to do with the school. I could not safely attend my own senior prom because this boy, obviously mad because all of this had gotten out, had told his friends that continued to attend school what had happened, and my safety at prom could not be guaranteed if I were to attend. The school’s literal response to that was exactly that. My safety could not be guaranteed…

I would find out more than a decade later as a result of some of Bub’s father’s friends being friends with the person that would eventually become his wife that due to the egregious oversight that allowed him to be withdrawn from attendance nearly immediately into this investigation that there being “nothing on paper” actually allowed him to join the United States military. That could have ended disastrously for everyone involved. I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t. Because the school couldn’t complete this investigation due to his parents withdrawing him really early into it, he was allowed to enlist in the military. That was appalling.

Like, his parents moved fast in how quickly they withdrew him as a student, and they made their intent extremely clear to the school even though they didn’t tell them why they were doing it. It was very evident.

But with all of the things that I had to deal with while attending school in this district, that being the absolute icing on the cake, is it really any wonder why I do not keep in touch with anyone that I went to school with (there being one exception, someone that attended the same school as me freshman year) and never will?