Text of the letter I just mailed off. The names have been changed to keep me from being targeted for even more pleas for funds.
To – Alumni Association, Somewhere High School, Bay Area, California
From – Daddy J. Bear
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I recently received your letter detailing the plan you all have to help refurbish some areas of the school I attended for the last year and a half of my high school education and endow a small scholarship for a graduate of the school to study “subjects that encourage world peace and harmony”. While I find it honorable that y’all wish to give back to the school, I will have to decline.
I find it rather humorous that, 23 years after I graduated from Somewhere High and almost 25 years since I arrived at the school, you all need a bit of money for a project or two, and you come to me for some of it. I had almost hoped that my name had been stricken from the rolls, since I have never signed up for your newsletters or tried to attend any of the reunions you all have held.
But as for my reasons for declining, you see, of the approximately 3500 students attending Somewhere High for the 18 months I was there, approximately 17 ever spoke more than a couple of words to me, and at least half of those were of the “Did you do the homework?” variety. One of them was the native Californian football player, whose parents also attended Somewhere High, who repeatedly asked if I enjoyed having carnal relations with the farm animals in my native North Dakota and if that was the reason my family had to move to the garden spot that is the extreme eastern edge of the Bay Area. Another was the president of our senior class, who upon being informed that I had decided to not attend Cal State and instead entered the armed forces, told me that I was giving up my future and that I was going off to be a “jack-booted oppressor” before telling that she couldn’t stomach the thought of me learning to kill. I noted with some amusement that these two individuals head up the committee that is doing this work.
But to be honest, nothing the students did could top what my English and History teachers said to me in the week prior to graduation. Both of them used the fact that I was going off to become a member of the Military Intelligence Corps as an excuse to list out the many atrocities I would be committing once I was a full-fledged member of the CIA. Apparently they knew even less about M.I. than I did, but what can you expect from people who had lived their entire lives in Somewhere, California?
Anyway, I wish you all luck. In closing, I’d appreciate it if my name and address could be removed from your database.
Sincerely,
Daddy J. Bear
Somewhere High School
Class of 1989
DaddyBear’s Den 
Mad Jack
/ August 11, 2012That sounds a lot like my own high school experience. Tell me, did you ever run into any of the old alumni or faculty later in life? Such meetings can be very unpredictable.
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daddybear71
/ August 11, 2012Only one, and that was an old girlfriend about 10 years after graduation. Other than that, they seem to all stay on the West Coast, and I stay away.
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Corey
/ August 11, 2012Strangely alot alike to what i sent when my class was having a reunoin and they kept bugging me
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bluesun
/ August 11, 2012People ask me why I’m not on facebook, and my reply is always “Are you joking? I’d have to talk to the people I went to high school with!”
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Auntie J
/ August 12, 2012I went to a very small, private, not-just-high school, which just last year decided to alienate almost all of its former alumni by changing the school’s name AND mascot…improperly and without consideration to the by-laws of the school. Once that was found out, they quickly backpedaled, and then forced through a change in considered voting members of the corporation so that the name change could then be voted through. (My understanding is that’s the only way they would’ve had enough votes, and I would not be surprised if the teachers and staff were told that their jobs hinged on a yes vote for the change.)
We were all expected to become nice little alumni members of the new school, without any expression of sympathy/empathy/understanding of how some of us felt about our school’s name being completely wiped out, and our mascot trashed, and all of it for reasons that seemed pretty darned stupid.
Before you think I’m off my rocker more than I already admit I am, allow me to point out that I spent 11 years at this school, knew every single person I graduated with by name (there were a whopping 16 of us), along with 85% of the remaining upperclassmen, am still friends with a lot of them, went back to visit frequently to see old friends (students and faculty alike) when I was still in the area, and my mom taught at this school for a total of 17 years before retiring. I’m FB friends with a good half dozen of my old teachers and the headmaster from when I graduated.
This is more than just a high school to me.
This is pretty much a lifelong relationship with a school whose administration and newly-formed alumni department want me to accept being something I wasn’t ever (new-school-affiliated grad and mascot).
The whole thing smacked of impropriety, and legacy-building on the part of the current headmaster. I could probably have gotten beyond the changes, if it wasn’t for the downright horrible way dissenting alumni were treated.
Needless to say, I didn’t tell them my new address when I moved. It was clear that those of us who graduated from the preexisting school were either going to have to line up and follow along like good little soldiers, or be summarily excommunicated. And I want nothing to do with a school like that. I’m proud of the school I went to, not the new one.
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BobG
/ August 12, 2012“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience.
And then there is California.”
– Edward Abbey
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