Old boy network

Google-searching one’s friends and acquaintances is like spying. Yet I suppose we all do it. Occasionally I feel moved to find out “what ever happened to” such-and-such a person I haven’t seen in a long time.

Lately I feel a curiosity about the boys with whom I attended Lower School at an old Episcopal private school here in New York City. In my time, the Lower School was not yet co-ed, so my classmates were all boys. This turned out to be a terrible thing, despite what you may be thinking. I was never comfortable around all those boys, with their sports and their rowdy ways. I was short and homo, and struggled to pass as merely “arty and effete.” Our mutual disapproval was tense and suffocating. The only time I ever had their respect was when I participated creditably in a music event performed for the whole Lower School. My skill was so obvious and at home on the public stage that it simply couldn’t be ignored. But other than that single time I was looked upon as irrelevant, out of place, mediocre, and generally ridiculous. I believe that my discomfort with this boys’ society translated into discomfort with academic settings in general. As a result I always conflate schoolwork with futility, and perform poorly as a student.

Se studiavo di più, che avrei potuto essere? Ci pensate?

My curiosity about the boys’ current whereabouts is a mystery to me, since I have almost no happy memories of my eight years spent at this Lower School. Yet I still wonder about those boys. I wonder what happened to them. Could they be interesting, nice people now? Or are they still horrible?

Today the name of one of the old boys popped into my head, and I “googled” him. Surprise, surprise: the adult who seems to be the boy I knew in Lower School has become a priest. In fact he’s a chaplain at, of all things, an old Episcopal boys’ school! (One in another city.) This really surprises me. I don’t remember Old Boy ever exhibiting an interest in religion. And yet there he is, an Episcopal priest. The kind of person I respect, broadly speaking.

And yet, looking over the website of Old Boy’s current school, I recognize all the characteristics that made me miserable as a child. I wonder if Old Boy feels at home among the kind of foul boys he was friends with in Lower School. (He and I weren’t friends.) I worry that the little gay boys at that school live at the mercy of jock bullies. Hopefully, the atmosphere there is looser and more collegial than it was for me at Lower School. And that all those boys can enjoy un-stifled childhoods, leading to greater things.