On Fitting In, Which Is Something I Usually Don’t

During an appearance on The Tonight Show back in the 1980s, the late comedian George Gobel asked a very poignant question:

“Did you ever feel as if the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?”

Lonesome George hit the nail on the head. I’ve felt that way most of my life.

I don’t say that as if it were a bad thing, though. Not fitting in has led me to a few interesting jobs and careers, including my current one in journalism.

As far back as I can remember, I didn’t fit in. When I was a little kid back in Chicago, I spent a lot of my time inside, reading or writing, while my peers were out playing. I did do my fair share of outside play, don’t get me wrong, but I felt much better when I was inside with a good book.

When my family moved from Chicago to LaGrange in 1970, the feeling of not fitting in intensified exponentially.

Arriving at Troup Junior High School as a brand-new seventh grader in September of that year, I was as outcast as I could be. I was short, skinny, wore glasses, had big ears, and I talked funny.

In other words, I had a target on my back for the next year or so, and the “good old boy” kids who’d grown up in the area delighted in picking on the weird kid from up North.

Interestingly, a lot of those kids who’d been torturing me then turned out to be good friends as the years went by.

In fact, when that class of students held their 50-year reunion recently, they made it a point to invite me.  I didn’t graduate with them; my family moved from LaGrange to Columbus during my ninth grade year, and when they came back a year later, I didn’t.  I lived with relatives in Columbus to finish my high school a year early. (I was very involved in the Junior ROTC program at my school, and didn’t want to leave.  Also, a girl named Lisa didn’t live in LaGrange, so there was that, too.)

I was honored and very much moved to be invited to the Troup High School Class of 1976 50-year reunion, and I attended with great excitement and anticipation.

Some of the faces I remembered, but they had changed over the intervening half-century. Well, so had mine. At the meet-and-greet Friday evening, I knew a couple of my erstwhile classmates by sight – but only because we’d been friends on Facebook.

The fact that I’d been going by the name “Jack” since 1976 threw them, because – except for the ones who’d stayed in the area and knew my radio work – they remembered me by my real name.

(No, I’m not going to go into that particular topic here.  It’s not a state secret or anything; I just don’t use it unless I have to.)

The meet-and-greet was held at the Wild Leap Brewery in LaGrange, a very popular place for people to visit – but this was my first time in there. It’s a pretty neat place, too, especially if one is into imbibing spirits (which I generally don’t do).

My best friend from those old days, Elton, showed up and we had a really great reunion. We’ve kept in touch over the years, so our relative appearances weren’t a surprise, but actually seeing my old friend once again was great.

The “formal” dinner Saturday night was wonderful. Many more attendees were there than came to the meet-and-greet, and everybody was wearing a name tag with their senior photo on it. It was a lot of fun seeing how many of us had changed in the intervening years.

The organizers even found my senior photo from my Columbus high school, but they listed me as “Jack” and that confused several classmates who didn’t know me as that. A few words or even a silly joke reminded them, and we had some really great reunions at the Reunion.

Still … I felt a little left out. I didn’t go through the high school experience with these wonderful folks, and our memories of each other were based more on the end stage of childhood than the beginnings of adolescence.

They drank and danced, two things I generally don’t indulge in. I sipped my Diet Coke and watched, apart from the rest – just like it was half a century ago.

I was, once again, the outsider. It was different, as I’d become something of a “celebrity” to my classmates – I’d gone into radio and television work, writing, and acting, which the rest of my former schoolmates didn’t grow up to do. Though it was unintentional and certainly not malicious, I realized again that being well-known, even in a small Georgia town, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Don’t get me wrong.  I had a very good time at the Reunion, and it was great to see all those old friends (“old” being the operative word these days).

But I still didn’t fit in, and I know now I never will.