Dazed and Confused.

The UCTM (Utah Council of Teachers of Mathematics) conference was this weekend, it was held in my old high school.

It was rebuilt about 15 years ago, except for the Auditorium which was opened my junior year, and the gym that was new just a couple years after I graduated.  So I spent some time wandering around the building looking at the new parts, and how they were attached to the old parts.

It came time to wander off to my first workshop (in room C303), I was down by the auditorium and passed rooms numbered in the 100’s.  I went up one flight of stairs that led to a hall with room numbers in the 200’s.  I found another flight of stairs that went further up, went up a floor and looked at the room numbers.  What the…?

The room numbers were in the 200’s also.  Questioning my sanity and whether or not I had really gone up another floor, I hurried down the stairs and checked the numbers below again.  Yup, they were 200’s.

Back up on what should have been the 300 floor, I found myself amongst the 200’s once again.  Totally confused, I headed back to the main part of the building, hoping to find someone else from my reality that could help me find room 303.

I took a corner, passed room 203, 201, passed a staircase in the center of the building and BAM, without changing floors I was right in front of room 301.  Whoa, Star Trek rip in the time-space continuum trip.

I found the room my workshop was in, sat down and looked at the back of my UCTM program at the map of the school and solved the riddle.  The school is cut into 4 zones.  The 100’s zone, 200’s zone, 300’s and 400’s.  The floors are denoted by letters, bottom floor is A, second (main) floor is B, the top two floors C and D.  This explained the C in front of my room; C303.  Third floor (C), third zone (C300’s) and the third room in that zone, hence C303.

I guess the old building having the 100’s on the first floor, 200’s on the second floor, 300’s the third floor and 400’s on the fourth was just too mundane.

Yes, we also had the 10’s, 20’s, 30’s and some other oddly numbered areas in the old school, but at least we had an excuse.  Back then East High was a hodgepodge of additions slapped on to the original building at various intervals.  We had the science wing, shop wing, gymnasium and the auditorium. 

Now, I realize the new school is one new building connected to two older ones, but these zoned cut up the new building, not just separating it from the old ones.  Maybe they had a reason for doing it this way, but it seems like it wouldn’t have been too hard to renumber the few rooms in the old buildings.  Or maybe not.

30 years.

Well, the 30 year reunion wasn't as much fun as I remember the 20 year one being, but it was still nice. The first evening we met out in front of the school. If you've ever seen any of the High School Musical movies, then you've seen the courtyard in front of my school, that's where the movies were filmed. The building's not the same, they tore it down and rebuild it over a decade ago, but like in the movie, it really is named East High School. Of course we weren't the Wildcats, we were the Leopards, but they even kept our school colors, red & white. Anyway, moving on before I get too narcissistic about the movies, as I walk down the stairs from the parking lot to cross the street one of my classmates is already standing at the corner, waiting for the light to change. I walk up to him and he sticks out his hand, introduces himself and comments on how he decided he was just going to introduce himself to everyone, since after 30 years most of us wouldn't recognize each other. Good thinking, and adopting his philosophy made things easier as I mingled. As I walked up to the crowd, I recognized Tracy immediately, she was with another classmate, and unfortunatley I've forgotten her name. Looking at the pictures I took in back then, we noticed she wasn't in any, and figured out why. It seems that she and Tracy and Gail (who was also there) had a falling out in our senior year, and she was persona non grata in ouor group. Which also explains why I didn't know her as well as the others. The only other person that made it from our group was Annette, who I also recognized immediately. I had really hoped my best friend, Ed, would make it, he had said that he planned on it, but he wasn't there. 10 years ago there were about 12 people from our little group, this year only 4 made it. Which is why it wasn't as much fun as the last one, but the 4 of us still had a great time. The first night we just sat around and chatted, mingled a little bit. The second night was a more formal affair at the Marriott Hotel. I mingled a lot more, talked to some of the parents of students I had when I taught at Churchill Jr. High, and some of the other people I knew a little more peripherally (if that's a word?). I also ran into an ex-student who was working for the portrait studio that was taking pictures for the event. We had dinner, then they had a raffle where the number right before mine, and right after mine was called, but mine wasn't. But that's ok, because the one person in our group that lives in another state won a gift certificate to Emigration Market, a locally owned, independent grocery store, which she gave to me since she wouldn't get a chance to use it. Then they gave out the awards. It was kind of a get to know your classmates kind of thing, the MC would ask something like "Who has more than 3 kids?" and everyone who did would raise their hands, then he'd up the number until only one person had their hand up. (by the way, 9 was our maximum). He asked about grandchildren (Annette won that one with 7), living closest to the school, farthest, most moves and things like that. We also discovered that there was one of our classmates that not only lived in the same house as when she was in high school, but still owned the Jeep she drove. (She lives just down the street from where I lived.) The really funny part was the gift certificates they were giving out. (Those of you who weren't in SLC in the 70's please bear with me.) $50 gift certificate to Saans Photography, $50 gift certificate to The Chalk Garden, $50 to Wolfe's Sporting Goods and $50 to Rick Warner Ford were among the ones they gave out. We were surprised that they include Grand Central or Bill & Nada's. (Get it now you SLC'ers?) I didn't figure it out until the 4th gift certificate, when I looked over at Gail and asked "Hey, didn't Wolfe's close down a long time ago?" Yes, my friends, they were giving out certificates to businesses that no longer existed, but were around when we were in school. That was a lot of fun. The re-creation of the Hawaiian dance from our Senior Class Hello Day Assembly the guys did, with topless 48 year olds, was somewhat disturbing and my friends and I were completely absent in the photo slide show they did, so that had limited appeal. We did laugh at the thought of us brining my photos up and saying, "Now for the seemier side of things..." But we decided not to. Overall it was an enjoyable time, it was nice to see some of the people who were such a big part of my life so long ago, catch up with what they were doing and promise to, if nothing else, see each other again in 10 more years, at the 40th.