Wow.

Check out this amazing picture, taken recently by an amateur photographer, of a tornado touching down in Iowa.

Growing up in Oklahoma, we experienced tornadoes just about every Spring. It became almost a nonchalant thing, mosey-ing over to Mrs. Berg's house down the street to hide out in her large backyard tornado shelter. On days when it wasn't being used as a shelter, the mostly-underground reinforced concrete structure sat empty except for a table and a couple chairs. I used to mow Mrs. Berg's lawn in the summertime, and she would put the money on the table in the shelter for me to pick up when I was done. It was always so much cooler down there than it was in her backyard... it could be 100 degrees in the shade outside, but the shelter was always cool (low 70s) and a bit damp. There were always some silverfish bugs down there, making it a not-so-great place to hang out... but otherwise it was a pleasant relief from a summer scorcher.

The damp quality of the air in there was likely due to the high water table in Stillwater, which was the reason why none of the homes in our neighborhood had basements. All the houses on Liberty Circle and the surrounding blocks were build on concrete slabs, with the only storage areas being the relatively large attics. Likely out of necessity, Mrs. Berg had the backyard shelter built, and invited the neighbors on our side of the circle to use it whenever we needed it.

Our neighborhood was a relatively nice one. Built in the 1960s, "University Estates" had lots of ranch-style houses made of brick, with attached two-car garages dominating the left side of the houses. Our neighbors were nice people for the most part, though there were some assholes peppered about. During the winter and summer, the weather in Stillwater prevented much more than a cursory "hello" between those who lived around us. But in the spring, whenever the sky turned still and green and the tornado sirens went off, we met the neighbors in Mrs. Berg's backyard. The children (including me) and the women would sit in the shelter while the men would stand outside looking for the funnel. Sometimes they'd see it... most times not (our county is pretty big from a square-mile standpoint).

Perhaps that's why I don't know my own neighbors. Admittedly it's a bit different, living in a city (even a small one like Madison) instead of a small town, and living in an apartment rather than a single-family home. But I think that the real reason why I don't know my neighbors is the simple fact that, while growing up, the only time I was ever really in close proximity to the people who lived near me was during a natural disaster.

That explains a lot, I think.

Bronze and blue

My high school reunion is next month. How is it possible that we graduated 20 years ago? I don't feel that old.

When I think of good times at school, I think of college. High school (and before) was quite another matter.

It seems like a lifetime ago. I was 17, newly-out, and living in small-town Oklahoma. I knew nothing of the world beyond the confines of Stillwater. I had no gay friends (at least not out ones). Until my senior year, my single goal was to get out. Just get through the day without getting harrassed or assaulted, and then get out. Thanks to the choir group (Amber, pictured above with me, was a fellow member and is still a good friend), senior year was a bit brighter. But that didn't change the fact that my grades suffered tremendously as a result of spending so much energy avoiding people who wanted nothing better than to get in their truck and run over a fag in the parking lot. I was hoping that my auditions for various music programs would be good enough to balance my shockingly poor GPA.

Luckily, it worked. Because I loved my singing teacher, I ended up staying in Stillwater for my undergrad work at Oklahoma State instead of heading off to Juilliard, and it was a wonderful experience. Juilliard would have been fun, but I chose against it... I said it was because it was too expensive and because no one in music cares where you got your undergrad degree (which is, for the most part, true), but really I just thought that the mid to late 1980s, with the AIDS bloodbath in full swing, was a bad time for a brand new gay kid to move to New York. Again, I was right... though I do sometimes wish I'd done it anyway. Regardless, I count my college years as the time when I began the process of growing into an adult. I was too focused on survival during high school to allow for emotional maturation and experimentation. (Didn't Maslow talk about a hierarchy of needs? My needs during high school were simple... get through the day without injury. How refreshing it was to graduate to the higher needs in college, even if it was still in my home town.)

I did go to the 10-year reunion. It was underwhelming, though my friend Scotty made it tolerable through his ebullient presence. He was the only other out gay guy in my class of over 350 (he came out later than I did), so we had a great time hanging out that weekend. Other than that, the event was populated by people who weren't necessarily overtly hostile, but who certainly know what to do with me, and who didn't care to hear anything about my then-four-year-old relationship.

So I wasn't overwhelmed with glee when I heard about the 20 year reunion (to be held, incomprehensibly, over the 4th of July weekend). I figured it would be the same old people hucking the same old homo-hating words at me... or perhaps they'd hold their tongues out of a sense of maturity and quasi-sophistication. I politely declined, posting a picture of Chris and me holding Chris' gorgeous 3-year-old son on the website as a not-so-tacet "screw you" to those people who, in their green youth, made my life so unhappy.

Around that time, I was persuaded to join Facebook. I'd tried other similar sites, such as MySpace and Friendster, but those never really took off for me. Facebook, on the other hand, is apparently where everyone from my high school class has been hanging out for the past 20 years. I've gotten back in touch with people from choir, people from band, and lots of others. Old classmates who never spoke three words to me growing up were suddenly sending me invitations to join their friends lists. I always accepted, despite my lingering confusion as to what their motivations could possibly have been. There's always the possibility that over the last 20 years these small town minds have been opened to the possibility that calling people "faggot" is wrong, and not because it's simply no longer socially acceptible. I like to think that this is the case. I'm not the same person I was when I was 17, and would hope that others from my home town experienced the same emotional growth.

I'm still not going to the reunion though. Maybe I've grown enough to forget these people, who are still 17 when I picture them in my head. Or maybe I've just learned avoidance strategies that allow me to maneuver through life without coming into close contact with small, bigoted minds. Whether it's through growth or evasion, I find that I have no need for the approval of those with whom I grew up. Perhaps someday I'll allow myself to return home to participate in future gatherings of these children of the 80s. Maybe someday I'll be able to think of them without immediately recalling the hatred and fear that they caused me.

Maybe someday I'll be able to forgive them. That day is not today.