Reuniting with My 18 Year-Old Self

From the moment I decided a week ago to fly back to Brown University for my 30th reunion, I knew I had write about it in some form. These…

From the moment I decided a week ago to fly back to Brown University for my 30th reunion, I knew I had write about it in some form. These kinds of emo-nostalgia think-and-feel pieces built around big life cycle events are kind of my metier.

Yep. Less than 40 hours at brown and I suddenly believe I’m bilingual. Give me a whole week and I’d likely be donning a black turtleneck, smoking a Galois and spouting the semiotic theories of Adorno, Benjamin and Baudrillard. Let’s just say, I got out of there in the nick of time.

I actually jotted down a few bullet points of potential topics before I arrived. One read: “The impact of social media on reunions — do we already know everything we need to know about each other?” In my case, many would argue “Yes! And So Much More.”

But all my preconceived notions about how I’d feel were instantly blown out of the water by the one emotion I had not anticipated: How thoroughly and absolutely I was feeling the emotions of my 18 year old self.

And this was by no means the ultra-cocky, world is my oyster, I’m gonna be a Rhodes scholar swagga of a 2nd semester senior year in high school.

Instead it felt entirely like all the complex, often morose and confusing feelings of being a freshman at Brown all over again. At 52. I had a lot of expectations for what the weekend might bring. This wasn’t one of them.

And it wasn’t merely a fleeting thought. It was pervasive and consuming. A quarter Xanax and three-quarters of a Corona with lime were both immune to its pernicious charms.

And I didn’t expect it at all. I expected to feel pangs of warm nostalgia. I expected to have some bittersweet mixed emotions about the passage of years. Maybe some vintage Beharian perseveration about mortality. Maybe some good, old fashioned reunion envy. I’d even pre-carved out 20 minutes at my next therapy session just for that. The man who just won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Nonfiction Book is in our class. I thought I was hot shit because I was once retweeted by Perez Hilton.

When I missed my connection and drive there 7 hours later from Hartford, I was pretty sure anger (at United Airlines) was going to be the prevailing emotion for what remained of the weekend.

Let me say straight off, I had a wonderful time. I’m glad I went. And I saw and spoke to some of the loveliest people I know. Many of them I’ve only come to meet the last few years on Facebook. And not just idle chit chat, but real talks about our lives up to this point and our aspirations and inspirations going forward.

People were kind enough to say sweet things about my columns. They possessed a a level of exposure to my inner thoughts that would have been unthinkable in the pre-Facebook/ Huffington Post era.

Similarly, I was introduced to tons of people and their kids as the Fuller House guy. One buddy introduced me to everyone the entire weekend as “The Big Macher.” I’m not sure what delighted me more: his seeming pride in me or my pride in watching a gentile Midwesterner obsessively saying “macher.”

But I can’t stress enough how completely unexpected it was to to feel like an 18 year-old with all its attendant insecurities and confusion and disorientatation.

Who am I going to stand with? Who am I going to eat with? I hear there might be a party in the West Quad let’s wander over there and see.

This was not like a 3 hour high school reunion in your hometown. One where you’re back in bed before the Heineken buzz has even worn off.

Here it’s a fully immersive weekend. The 50-something Westworld recreation of being a freshman.

It was very strange to feel 18 again. Just as lost. Dislocated and bewildered. Remember when Beatlemania was billed as “Not the Beatles but an incredible simulation.” Now replace “Beatles” with a “nervous Jewish boy from Encino” and that’s pretty much my freshman year. And thus, it was also my weekend.

I didn’t feel like myself now: a reasonably accomplished TV writer. A loving husband and father of 2. A member of a synagogue and a big box discount chain. You know, a grown man.

I didn’t even feel like I did upon graduating Brown. When I had a tight group of fraternity brothers I graduated with plus those of all ages. I left infinitely more secure than how I had arrived.

This weekend, like freshman year, I came alone. I stayed alone. I left alone

My feelings weren’t protected by my wife and kids. I wasn’t inoculated from insecurity by a fancy job title.

It was a weekend of distant, but so familiar feelings. Hoping people would talk to me. Hoping I wouldn’t eat my next meal alone. Wandering across campus asking familiar faces if they knew where any after party was. I felt adrift.

I was once again envious of the super tight friend groups that had formed on other freshman hallways. They seemed just as impenetrable on Saturday as they did when I strongly considered transferring my first frosh semester.

I’d see the international jet set crowd and once again, it made me feel like a shabby suburban schnorrer. A word they’ve likely never used and likely have never even heard.

Mind you I barely knew those people then and not at all now. But it was still intimidating in a primal way to see people arriving in such a self-contained, self-assured pack. “Why isn’t that me” blended seamlessly with “why wasn’t that me” in a frosty cocktail of self-loathing and insecurity.

I know it probably sounds ridiculous, but seeing all those people in all those places, thrust me back into my 18 year old self. Like one of those time jump shows that NBC tries and cancels every 3 years.

Maybe I was the only person who felt these oddly conflicting emotions. According to most Facebook posts in the topic, the reunion ranged from “Best Weekend Ever” to “Best Weekend Ever.”

It’s true that not everyone pens an emotional confessional every time they have a feeling. And social media is by nature, shallow and superficial. Also, it’s likely many of my classmates never had these feelings the first go around. Why would they be triggered by seeing the sequel if they were never part of the original movie?

All of this was also naturally (exponentially?) compounded by the fact my daughter just went through her college freshman year and my son soon will. My hope is they didn’t share my painful feelings of inadequacy. And if so, I pray they’re constitutionally blessed with the resilience to fight through it.

And mind you, no one at the reunion did anything wrong. Far from it. I’d say 8 of every 10 people couldn’t have been more gracious and welcoming. There is zero question I was projecting. And it turns out, that may be my savant super skill in case I’m every cast in a Marvel movie.

There were the typical reunion annoyances and faux pas. Getting tongue tied around certain people I’d been eager to talk to. I mentioned to someone that we almost dated freshman year which quite comically, came as news to her. A South American man was oddly obsessed with how much weight I had gained as if he alone was letting me on the fact I had. Others stumbled into conversation I was leading about familial suicide and soon hightailed it back to anywhere else.

And there was that moment when you think ”we probably don’t look that different” from the folks celebrating their tenth Until you remember they were two when we graduated. Then you try not to let anyone see you dry heave in the bushes right before Sting and Trudy walk past you during the processional.

I didn’t have all the things that have inoculated me from accessing those feelings my entire adult life. My wife, who has been my side at practically every social event for the past 29 years, wisely sat this one out. So did my two teenage kids.

As a freshman, I wasn’t in touch with my feelings. I just felt them. This weekend included the double whammy of feeling crappy AND being stunned that I was feeling crappy.

I guess as an adult, I’m rarely this emotionally naked. I have my family, my friends, my job. This weekend I was a guy who flew alone across the country into uncertainty. How odd to feel the pressure to piece together a social itinerary on the fly. To try and find folks to hang with or eat a meal with. Just like the student I am not.

There were parts that were beyond meaningful. The Brown commencement, where you march with your class, saluting and being saluted by a sea of soon to be graduates packs a grade 5 emotional wallop. It gave me, as the kids say, all the feels.

The class of ‘68 was still kicking ass. Closest our class came to activism this weekend was one guy staging a sit-in on the dance floor every time the deejay played Whitesnake. Which was way more often than you’d think.

I had lovely meals with friends I only really knew more from social media than from college itself. I got waved off the street to join a table of “88ers from Jordan, Japan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Trinidad and Utah. Only at Brown! (Although I never was open minded or confident enough to have that kind of moment while at Brown). I had a great time reminiscing about drinking a grain-alcohol in a trashcan drink someone named “Purple Jesus” and how it resulted in me making out with someone’s girlfriend right outside the Bio-Med Center. Which is also why you could have seen my laughing Monday morning as I inadvertently walked by Bio-Med Center.

I danced on grass with people I didn’t know. Pretty to well “PYT.” Shockingly well to “Take on Me.” I met up with another crew at Funk Night for more mixed-results dancing. But I did force myself to dance. Talk about fleeing my comfort zone.

I stumbled upon an a capella group doing a midnight flash mob performance of “Fat Bottomed Girls,” so energetic, so passionate, that in the moment it made me believe was the greatest song ever written.

I had one person tell me that a friend spoke so affectionately about me, it drove me to tears. It shocked the woman to learn that my friend and I hadn’t laid eyes on each other since our own graduation.

My profound sense of being dislocated wasn’t just an emotional reaction. It kept manifesting itself physically. I missed a connecting flight. I wandered lost for an hour looking for my hotel by foot — even while using a map app. And I couldn’t remember where anything was.

So what does my profound sense of being lost (mentally and physically) mean going forward. Maybe I don’t place myself in enough unsettling or confusing situations. Maybe I too often rely on the protections afforded by my wife, my children, my writing partner, my staff.

To my credit, I let myself feel whatever I was feeling. I didn’t try to drown it with Chardonnay and gyros. I felt the feelings. I acknowledged them. I talked them through with a few sensitive souls. And I went on my way.

Unlike freshman year, this isn’t my life. I can get on a plane and go home. Chalking this week up as a strange time portal I was dropped into for 48 hours.

But it also means I have more work to do. It filled me with gratitude for the people who are in my life. But it also exposed a lingering fragility I didn’t realize I possessed. So I’ll work through it. I’ll try to care less what other people are doing. I may have take less Xanax the next time.

The next time you say? Oh yeah. I wouldn’t miss this emotional Rorschach test for the world. My feelings weren’t always good. But boy did it feel good to have them.

All in all, I didn’t mind reuniting with my 18 year old self. He was a good kid who wasn’t afraid to fly across the country, to a school he’d never laid eyes on and match talents with some of the smartest, most interesting kids in the world. Being there made him believe he was smart, believe he was funny and believe that he could have a functioning, even thriving career as a writer.

And it was nice, because I can tell that kid not to worry about the little things he’s stressing about. And most importantly, I get to tell him that his life is going to work out pretty magnificently in ways he can’t even imagine. That his wife, son and daughter will bring him such unimaginable joy and meaning, he often fears his heart will explode from over usage.

We don’t get many chances to commune with our younger selves. And even fewer chances to let them know that everything’s going to be alright.