Reunite the Bagels! High School Gym, Cheating & Memories

Most likely you have heard this philosophical question at some point in your life. One of the aspects of the question deals with unperceived existence, in this case is sound only sound when someone is around to hear it?

Lately, I have found myself with a case somewhat similar. I have few fond memories from high school. Basically I wish I went from intermediate school to college. But one of my main positive memories involved a gym class where I was mistakenly placed with older kids. Recently I came across the one kid I remember from that class, who as it turns out, has no memory of me or the team that I cherished.

In turn, that has caused me to question the validity of memory. Does memory need an outside confirmation to have meaning?

I forget if I was a freshman in with sophomores or a soph in with juniors. It does not really matter. Either way, the school made a mistake, and there I was. Now, I was a pretty athletic kid, so I actually kept going to the gym class, even after I went through school channels and had the class dropped. It was last period and I could have caught an earlier bus home, but I decided I'd rather be in the class.

I did not know any of the kids in the class (our four year school had between 4,500-5,000 kids in it) but I became friends with this kid Danny. Now, Danny was an off-beat kid - he wanted to institute his own fascist government - but he was funny and we hit it off pretty good.

Danny and I ended up on the same volleyball team. I had decent height and I was the second-smallest boy on the team, with only Danny smaller. Basically, our team was made up of boys you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. Our team captain had a simple draft philosophy - pick the meanest boys and the prettiest girls. Danny and I were among the last ones picked.

Usually, I took these team sports things pretty seriously. I tried my best, played by the rules and typically won. But this team was completely different. Nobody cared about winning. In fact, out main goal seemed to be to cheat and frustrate the other team.

Now, I didn't get it at first. I was running around like a maniac, trying to get to whatever ball I could. I had serious doubts if any girl on our team could hit the ball over the net and the boys had no interest if they couldn't spike the ball. But pretty soon I figured it out.

We were the bad guys.

We cheated on the score, we grabbed the net and we threw the ball to the other side as often as we hit it. One of our favorite moves was on a dead ball to throw it at the other team's best player as hard as we could, instead of rolling it under the net.

Inevitably, we would start cheating too much and somebody on the other team would get the teacher to monitor our game and we would end up losing. Again. At the end of class, the teacher would record the scores and our captain would have to announce that we did not win a game.

The teacher dubbed us "The Bagels" for our zero wins. He thought it would be a motivating ploy to try to get us to take it more seriously and to play better. Instead, we wore it like a badge of honor. To add to our intimidation factor of the other teams, we would start screaming "Bagels" before, during and after the game.

If we met someone on the team in the hall, we would shout at the top of our lungs "Bagel!" Now, I was a quiet kid, with quiet friends. So imagine the shock my friends had when some older, rough looking kid would walk right up to me and the two of would start shouting "Bagel!" at each other.

I loved it.

The volleyball section of class ended and we moved on to other things. So our chant changed to "Reunite the Bagels!" Eventually, the screaming subsided, although we would still identify each other as a Bagel.

To me, that team was wonderful because for the first time in my life, winning was not the motivating force. Instead it was about creativity. Could I catch the ball and throw it over the net and make it look like a legitimate hit? Could I grab the net, lower it for our team and get away with it? Could I set up one of my teammates for a killer spike? Could I get a monster spike myself? Basically, it was a good game if we lost 15-1 and our one point was a spike directly on someone's face.

After that class was over, I would see Danny in the hall and we would salute each other with Bagel. I never had another class with him but I would still run into him occasionally as he started hanging out with some drama kids that I knew.

Now flash forward 30 years and I come across Danny via Facebook. I am pretty excited at the chance to catch up with a blast from my past but unfortunately Danny has no memories of the Bagels or me. The only recognition comes from a mutual Facebook friend.

My bagel memory has taken a hit because Danny does not remember it. I have deliberated about this for a few days now and I have come to one conclusion. Screw it. My memory doesn't need anyone else to confirm it to have meaning. If I was going to make something up, it would have been to hook up with one of the hot girls on our team. Instead my memory revolves around acceptance from punks.

Reunite the Bagels!