The Seven Dwarves

For some reason, during my senior year in high school I had a posse. There were seven of them, all sophomore guys who followed me around, so my friends affectionately dubbed them the Seven Dwarves. I'm not sure what their fascination was with me, unless it just that I was a senior and we all liked the same music.

We were all deeply, passionately in love with the 80s hair metal bands. If that means nothing to you, think Ratt, Rainbow, Europe, Dokken. And the Dwarves dressed the part. They all had long hair and wore band t-shirts and parachute pants. I ... didn't. I've written before about how I was not really part of any group in high school and the music thing was part of it. Most of the girls that listened to this type of music were stereotyped as slutty and they dressed the part as well. I had no intention of being categorized that well, so I just dressed pretty much the same way I dress now.

This weekend, through the magic of Facebook, I was reunited with one of the Dwarves. I also happened to go to prom with him and I think we dated for about a month as well. I don't think either of us were really that romantically interested in the other -- neither of us could remember exactly when or why we broke up. And if it was that unmemorable, it couldn't have been that big of a deal.

We talked for about two hours on Sunday night, and it was shocking to me how different our lives are. He still lives in Garland and actually works for GISD. He's a graphic designer, though, so that adds a little bit of the coolness factor that I remember from 26 years ago. He's got 13-year-old twins that live with him about half the time. His one social outlet is his Wednesday bowling night. He's got the ultra-conservative politics of the redneck town that is Garland. To be fair, though, he doesn't drink beer, so he can't be that much of a redneck as many of the kids I graduated with.

It was funny because he remembered really random things about hanging out with me. And when we tried to figure out exactly where we fit into the high school social strata, he was just as stumped as I was. Only one of the Dwarves really drank or smoked weed. They and I didn't have that much of an interest in it. Plus we were all broke and spent all of our money on music. In fact, the only thing I really remember us doing was going to music stores and listening to music in the car (usually mine, because I'm not sure any of them had their drivers' license) or at someone's house.

At one point during the phone call, he played a couple of songs on guitar for me. I hadn't even realized he was a musician. But his passion for music drove him to learn.

We ended our conversation with an open ended invitation to talk again. I doubt that it will happen because we just don't have that much to talk about. But I'm glad he contacted me. Sometimes I forget that there were good bits in high school. And the Seven Dwarves were definitely one of the best.

Update: Just heard from him again. One of the other Dwaves is in the Air Force and stationed in Japan for two years. It's so weird to think of these guys all grown up and doing important things. But hey, they probably think the same thing about me!