Love Always

High school graduation day in 1978 -- I'm the one with the diploma. (Photo by R. Bruce Cameron)

Because I am obsessed with the inexorable march of time and anniversaries of various and sundry rites of passage, I was quick to remember that yesterday, June 18, marked the 35th anniversary of my graduation from high school.

I'd hastily add that photographers, by the very nature of our work, are constantly reviewing -- not to say living in the past. The moment we make a photograph, we begin looking back in time as we prepare it for publication. Over the course of a career, we seem to look further and further back through the years.

So, on the occasion of this momentous date, I rifled through my black and white negatives and found pictures of senior week at [Suburban NJ High]. And then, because 35 years later, I could not remember some of the names of my classmates, I went back to our yearbook, its cover depicting a huge rainbow over a bucolic landscape that in no way resembled our town, still in its plastic slipcover, like Grandma's sofa cushions.

Parenthetical aside: do high school or college students still get yearbooks? Do they exist in this digital, put-everything-on-my-smartphone, paper-less age? What mementos of their high school years do kids inscribe for their classmates to acknowledge their journey through puberty?

Because, once I began delving into the pages of the Class of 1978, I had to stop to re-read the writings of my classmates -- boys scribbling brief, desultory messages in wild cursive, right across their black & white portraits; girls in neat, controlled handwriting, carefully framing their faces with long, thoughtful, vaguely grateful missives. ("It was fantastic getting to know you these past few months.")

On first glance, I was reminded of my own kindness, funniness, buffoonery, what a great listener I am (not to say, solicitous) -- or so these people said. Alas, poor Ross, we hardly knew ye -- but you really lightened up Advanced Biology class. Some were more honest than others: I was, at best, a class clown; at worst, a classroom disruption.

Maybe I've just always been a cynic. It's possible. There are a lot of them in my business -- it's an occupational hazard.

But the more lasting image was one of youthful innocence, that, with the benefit of 35 years of hindsight, seems almost hilarious in its naivete. "Love always," ended so many notes from girls I barely knew then. I'm not suggesting that these people were insincere, only that these rituals -- graduations, yearbooks, reunions, and the like -- trigger in us an almost knee-jerk response, in which we become overly effusive.

Yet, as I reviewed these writings that I hadn't really thought about for several decades, I quickly found the ones that touched me most -- then and now.

"Pup," read one from a male classmate, referring to me by my club softball nickname, "Love ya! D.B." Then he penned a cryptic postscript: "'Miles long'." Sophomoric penis humor, or something else? I never asked.

The other, from a girl who has since died, read, "Dear Ross -- Simply -- all my love. Underneath the urbane wittiness, you're a sweet guy."

It's safe to say that I am not now, nor have I ever been, urbane, much less witty, but I have always loved that she thought so, or at least pretended to. Sadly, later, when I was commuting into New York City in the 1980s, I would occasionally see her on the train. I tried to catch her eye, to say hi, but she invariably looked away. I'd say that she didn't recognize me, but it's more likely she just had grown into another place, with no time for the "urbane wittiness" (or witlessness). And I was still too awkward to approach her.

The awkwardness of high school is a time-honored conceit, but the truth is that most of us never outgrow our awkwardness, it just assumes new forms. The inability to get the job/partner/salary/lifestyle we really want, it's all just an extension of not feeling comfortable with one's self.

And that's probably, in the end, the real reason for my wistfulness over this 35-year anniversary; that, even now, I'm not really completely comfortable in my own skin.

But at least I'm a nice guy. Just ask my classmates.