WordSisters

Author: Ellen Shriner

  • High School Reunion: Go or No? and Something Amazing But Good

    When the notice of my 40th high school reunion arrived, my immediate reaction was, “This can’t possibly be right. I’m not THAT old.” But a little quick math (2012 – 1972 = 40 ?!?) told me it was true.

    yeah, I’m afraid I really did have octagonal glasses . . .

    And quick on the heels of that thought was, “Even if am that old, I have no wish to live in the past.”

    But then I had a voicemail from the former class president—a really nice guy—somebody I’d always gotten along with. We weren’t that close, but I sensed we both yearned for something more out of life. I don’t know what he hoped for—but we recognized that in each other.

    So that made me curious. As I recall, he was a runner and a good writer. What had he done with his life? That led to wondering about a few other people, and the Go/No Go debate was on.

    I can think of a million reasons NOT to go. Here are four—

    1. The reunion is in Ohio. I live in Minnesota.

    2. I haven’t thought about high school or most of those people in years—why start now?

    3. I have no desire to network with the insurance sales people or financial advisors in the group.

    4. I don’t want to be squashed back into the shy insecure persona I had years ago just so I fit somebody’s memory of me.

    And yet.

    1. When I went to my 20th reunion, it was fun.

    2. People seemed to remember my essential self—my best qualities—not how dorky I was.

    3. They were kind. And genuinely pleased to see me . . . despite the prank I played with my profile in the memory book (The idea of bragging was distasteful to me, so I decided to be as outrageous as possible. I claimed to have won the Nobel Peace prize, to have married a rocket scientist, and to be raising two child prodigies. I assumed that description was so over-the-top that everyone would know I was joking. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, so then I felt bad for mocking the profiles).

    4. Certainly, after 40 years, we’ve all gotten over high school. No one cares any more about who was cool and who wasn’t. Now we’re all old (and therefore uncool).

    Gawd, I sure hope we no longer have to prove anything to each other. Many of us wanted to be somebody, do something, make a mark. Did we? I don’t know, but I hope my classmates are at peace with whatever success (or lack of) they have.

    Maybe I prefer to imagine that members of the class of 1972 at Central Catholic High School are content with their lives. I’m not sure I want to find out if some of them are still insecure and wearing their accomplishments like merit badges . . . .

    After forty years, my classmates feel as I do: fond of some genuinely nice people I used to know.

    What do you think—Should I go?  Or not?  Let me know!

    If your 40th reunion is looming out there in the future, will you go?

    Amazing But Good

    Today, the Star Tribune reported, “Minnesota’s biggest Boy Scout group said that gays and lesbians remain welcome in its troops.” I applaud the Northern Star Council, which represents 75,000 Boy Scouts in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, for their inclusive stance—a position that bucks the national Boy Scouts of America policy banning openly homosexual people from participating in the Boy Scouts. See my June 21st blog, “A Parental Dilemma” for more on this topic.

  • Because of Title IX . . .

    Molly Watters, first female drum major for the University of Minnesota Marching Band, 2006

    by Ellen

    . . . My friend Marilyn was able to study auto repair at a community college and work as a mechanic at Sears, because she needed a job that paid well.

    . . . My niece Katie was offered a scholarship to pole-vault on a college track and field team, something that was unheard of in 1972, when I was a high school senior.

    . . . My son Greg was able to meet his girlfriend in the University of Minnesota Marching Band last year. Until 1972, young women weren’t allowed in the U of M’s marching band. In 2006, they had their first drum major (shown above).

    Because of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (sometimes known as the Equal Opportunity in Education Act), millions of young women—and young men—have equal access to educational programs and activities:

    No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

    The simplicity of the statute is deceptive, but the effects are far-reaching. And surprisingly, there isn’t a word about access to athletics, though that’s what Title IX is best known for.

    Besides sports, Title IX also covers access to higher education, career education, education for pregnant and parenting students (remember when girls were kicked out of school if they were pregnant?), employment, learning environment, math and science, sexual harassment, standardized testing and technology.

    Because of Title IX . . . women of my era had more opportunities, and now so do our sons and daughters.

    There are numerous famous examples Title IX’s effects:

    • Past U.S. Olympic champions like Mia Hamm, Jackie Joyner Kersee, and Lindsay Vonn
    • The women who are about to become medalists later this month in the 2012 Summer Olympics

    But just as important are everyday examples of Title IX’s effects:

    Because of Title IX, it is no longer remarkable that women are doctors, lawyers, professors, architects, engineers, software programmers, members of the military, business owners and more.

    And that, for me, is remarkable.

    I was one of thousands of women who entered the professional workforce in 1979, when the world was changing rapidly. My unpublished memoir COLETTE’S LEGACY traces my personal and professional coming-of-age and puts a personal face on the social changes that transformed a generation.

  • A Parental Dilemma

    by Ellen

    In 2000, my son Greg was a 9-year-old Cub Scout. He liked hanging out with the other neighborhood guys, going on field trips, and earning badges. He especially loved the camping trips, which took place nearly every month. THIS was the big reason Greg had joined scouts. We camped as a family, but our trips were pretty tame compared to hanging out with other guys, stuffing yourself with s’mores, telling fart jokes and ghost stories until all hours of the night.

    But when the Supreme Court ruled on a case that allowed the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to exclude gays, my husband John and I were upset. The BSA contended that being openly gay is contrary to the organization’s values; however, the BSA says it teaches scouts to respect all people. To me, “respect” and “exclusion” are contradictory terms (respectful exclusion?!?).

    Even more troubling was the unstated, but widely accepted, assumption that excluding openly gay leaders would keep our boys safe from sexual abuse. The related assumption was that heterosexuals are less risky around children than openly gay men and lesbian women. Because of the BSA’s fears, rather than the facts, they excluded a lot of good people from scouts unnecessarily. John and I both had worked with gays and lesbians through each of our jobs—people we liked and respected. We were so angry about the policy that we considered quitting the pack in protest.

    So we sat Greg down to explain our views. He understood that we opposed the ban, and he could see that it was unfair, but it was all very abstract to him—he didn’t know any gays or lesbians. He said he didn’t see how anything he could do would make a difference. He was only a nine-year-old kid.

    Finally, John and I understood that we’d stumbled into a common parenting trap—we were filled with political angst, but Greg was not. He was just a kid, and he wanted to have fun with his friends. In fact, he wasn’t all that clear about what it meant to be gay (men who love men, we’d said). And his grasp of sex and reproduction (learned just the year before) was pretty vague, too.

    We realized that quitting scouts would have no impact on the national BSA leaders—it would only punish Greg—so we decided not to leave, but simply to make our views known within the pack. Greg continued to enjoy scouting until high school, when he dropped out because of competing demands on his time.

    And the ultimate irony?

    In 2009, one of the pack leaders, who’d appeared to be heterosexual and who had cleared the background checks, was charged with sexually abusing some of the scouts Greg knew. He was subsequently convicted and imprisoned. We were all angry that a person the pack had trusted had hurt the boys. We worried about them and the emotional harm the pedophile had done. But we never really felt the pack could have prevented the problem—the pedophile, who had no criminal record, had fooled all of us.

    It’s pedophiles we needed to protect our children from, not openly gay men and lesbian women.