I'm not someone who Googles old acquaintances much; I tend to leave the past in the past, and I'm also a bit of a digital recluse. (Who am I kidding: a bit of a recluse in general!) By this I mean that I never got much into Facebook and have limited myself to only dabbling in other platforms. GR is pretty much the only mechanism I regularly use to virtually interact with others, and I like it because it's focused precisely on the literary aspects of life rather than, you know, All Of Life.





Noneth

I'm not someone who Googles old acquaintances much; I tend to leave the past in the past, and I'm also a bit of a digital recluse. (Who am I kidding: a bit of a recluse in general!) By this I mean that I never got much into Facebook and have limited myself to only dabbling in other platforms. GR is pretty much the only mechanism I regularly use to virtually interact with others, and I like it because it's focused precisely on the literary aspects of life rather than, you know, All Of Life.





Nonetheless: I did recently, and really out of nowhere, compulsively Google an old friend/acquaintance from high school, someone who'd been a grade ahead of me and whom I knew from having done the annual Shakespeare play together for three autumns at the small suburban Detroit Catholic high school we attended. Though my Googling was fairly random and unusual overall, it was neither terribly unusual nor random in that my Googling was centered on an acquaintance from my high school drama club circle. I've found that years and years later, even after having wandered the world and attended some of its fine universities and wrested out an existence in some of its major cities, these fellow adolescent Midwestern amateur thespians, clad in their finest early-90s goth attire, are still the folks I think of most often, and most fondly, and hope to find well. Why is this?!





I guess I believe, or at least can hypothesize based on my personal experience, that a significant portion of one's best self - including the part that constructively solves problems and contends with challenges, and the part that empathizes and connects with others and develops a sense of self in relation to them - is developed during a critical high school window that, in the case of myself, and presumably many others, happens to occur right around the peak time period of prospective involvement in school drama club, a place where even the most introverted kids can be compelled to safely push comfort zones, interact with others, formulate and share opinions, and be encouraged to use one's unique talents to contribute to the betterment of a community. I often feel like my personal journey of self-actualization in the decades after high school can in some ways be viewed as an unnecessarily elaborate full-circle return to many values and sensibilities I initially formulated in high school, only after having figured out what they'd actually look like IRL.





And likewise: I've been thinking lately, as one might in my line of work (as a sexual assault counselor) and also just as a post-November-2016 citizen of the U.S., that I owe a debt of gratitude to the fellow young men in my high school drama club circle for always treating me and other young women and men with acceptance, kindness, and respect. Maybe it's because the drama club attracted sensitive and empathic and outsider-identifying kids; maybe it's because it was an itty bitty Catholic school; maybe it's because I'm just old enough to have dodged the bullets of social media, cellphone cameras, and high-speed Internet (porn) that have made school environments so harrowing, confusing, and devaluing for so many young women and men today. In any case, I'm fortunately able to remember high school as a time of safe and happy coeducational interaction for me and for my friends.





The old acquaintance I Googled was someone who helped make this safety and comfort possible. I distinctly remember the caring and polite manner in which he treated me and others, even just in quiet and seemingly insignificant everyday encounters.





Sometimes when I listen to the stories of sexual assault survivors (most of whom already knew and worked or studied or hung out with or dated the perpetrator), I'm amazed that socializing used to be so safe, that there once existed the kind of simple, essential, reliable, unwavering kindness and concern demonstrated by my friend. While being treated according to the principles of basic human rights and dignity shouldn't be a privilege, in a U.S. high school or elsewhere, it still seems rare to me today. I'm sure that being treated this way as a young woman positively impacted my self-regard and in some part made it possible for me to subsequently take on the tough business of post-high school living with the best and fullest effort I could muster.





So it was amidst a grateful curiosity that I impetuously Googled my old acquaintance. I discovered that he is no longer living, and had died very suddenly and young, in the vicinity of 40, from a previously undiscovered heart defect. By all available accounts, he had remained to the very end as kind a soul to all as I'd ever remembered him. His kindness is corroborated by many independent online voices of those who knew him throughout time and place. Many of these online anecdotes of his kindness rang so true to my memory that I could have written them myself.





This graphic novel, Drama, has been reliably lurking in my library for years, and I've gathered it's become a kind of modern classic. On a whim I reserved it, picked it up, and read it shortly after learning about my friend's death, only a while thereafter making the connection that this act of reading was likely a fond, if initially subconscious, memorial to my friend. Suffice it to say that you should probably read this book, and will likely appreciate it, if you have any good memories of your own scholastic drama club experiences. I wish I could draw well enough to share with others the story of the supportive community that I was fortunate to experience in my youth, and in the company of my friend who probably never realized the full extent of his positive impact or how widely it was appreciated. I couldn't hope to draw any of it, but luckily I think Drama captures the essence well enough to function as a tribute for any fellow drama kids out there, and to illustrate the power of these formative interactions and their subsequent influence on a developing young life.