So, the big news form the reunion is me. Yep. Me. back in the day, the late 80’s at ‘ole Tabor College, there was a group of girls, mostly in my class that formed their own little clique and were named The Covey. If anything, they were “the” group on campus. They were sought after by the guys. They were outgoing, loud, and moved in a pack. Not exactly the kind of group that I thought would hang out with my group, the band fags. And they didn’t.
Now, a few times the “wall” was broken. I became pretty close with one of them as she was Stuco president and I was VP. Another of my group eventually married one in their group. What can I say it was a small college. You couldn’t avoid interactions with everyone at some point. But, other than that, I pretty well didn’t interact with them.
It’s interesting that years after something like that, you find out information that, well, had you known then, you might have made other choices. Well, though I figured the Covey didn’t even know I existed, they, in fact, had some sort of fixation on me. Now, I’m not saying this as arrogant and I don’t see myself as a prima donna. At all. Now, with me not acknowledging that they existed because I thought that they didn’t acknowledge MY existence, well, that spells, a certain mystique about me. Cool.
And then, a few years after graduation, I apparently saw one of them at a conference. It would have been about 1995, a full 7 years post graduation. And the event was an FCA camp. The story goes that Cara came up to me and re-introduced herself with her high school girls in tow. And I, being this mystique of a person (well, perhaps we could use other words for me in this case), I snubbed her. Or, at least that’s her story. Actually, I don’t even remember the event. Or at least her at the event. I happened to be video taping the event, so, I was “working”, at least that’s the excuse I will use for now.
So, before that event, and definitely AFTER that event, the Covey has had this joke, I guess you could call it a joke, about me dissing Cara (and now comes to light that apparently I dissed another Covey gal, Corrie!). So, 20 years after graduation and 13 years after that event, I “made up” with Cara. Me, oblivious to the fact that the Covey had it out for me (or that they thought I had it out for them!) am now in the process of righting the wrongs which I have committed.
Though it makes for a funny story and a good excuse to actually start talking with the Covey, it actually sheds some light on my life. I certainly noticed the Covey, yet, I was pious. They didn’t fit my “model” of whatever my model was at the time. So, I wrote them off. Piety. They “accepted” me, my “bandfagness” and all. Yet, I didn’t accept them, and they were the popular ones! People watch. It exposes my uneasiness, especially at that time, being around “popular” people who thought and even acted a bit differently than I did. It shows that I’ve grown, a bit. I have become much less strict, less legalistic. And they have, by all accounts, become a bit less “loose”. So we meet in the middle.
It’s interesting. And not that I see us vacationing in the future, I certainly see some simblance, if only a truce, of a relationship beginning. 20 years later.
It certainly makes me wish I had been more open back then. My overthinking and obsessions get me in trouble.
Now, as time has passed, I see them as having this close relationship. I don’t know where they all stand, but I do know that they have maintained a relationship well beyond that of me and my “band fags”. We have our own lives, our own agendas which are often good. Yet, they have relationship. A bond which transcends time and lives and all sorts of stuff.
Here’s to the Covey.
