SRPL Reflections: Drama

’m going to let you all in on a rather pathetic little secret. I went to Chaminade for three reasons: it was five blocks from my house, I wouldn’t be eaten alive by any of the Neanderthals that bullied me in grammar school and I was terrified of the opposite sex. Sure, it was a good school and I was reasonably sure I could hack it, and if I did survive the experience it would be a valuable commodity in the future, but that was not uppermost in my mind.

During the high school years I “apprenticed” myself to my one cool friend. He had natural charisma and while it was fascinating watching him in action I just ended up living vicariously through him and came to be known as the quaint, geeky sidekick.

When he moved and high school ended I found myself aching for the soapy angst that my peers experienced long before me. I wanted some drama. And where did I finally find it? SRPL.

When I recall what passed for drama back then I can’t help but think of it as quaint. Real drama is bills, job loss, illness, death. Back then I searched out drama wherever I could find it, not just in matters of the heart, but who’s pissed at who, who got in trouble, who said what about who, etc.

There I found not only my own drama but became enmeshed in the drama of others and I have to say, for a straight arrow Catholic school boy, it was pretty invigorating (also heartrending, terrifying and joyful at the same time). The problem was that I dove into a world I wasn’t quite ready for. I needed a little seasoning and when I think back to my earliest days there I cringe.

Of course relationships dominate any discussion of drama. As I said I was really ill equipped to handle what I was reaching for. I hid away for four years at an all-boys school and reaped the consequences of it. At SRPL I was lucky because I worked with guys who were friends of mine long before we arrived there, so I was somewhat insulated and immediately accepted (I was the last to arrive).

All of us were desperate to have these experiences but I’d say we all lacked the tools. After almost a year of bumbling I finally got it right and settled into my first real relationship. I had never experienced such highs and lows in my entire life. It was like a drug. It was pure drama. Melodrama might be a better word.

Sometimes I wonder if I had experienced these things earlier in my life would I have been better equipped to handle them. I really doubt it. What I’ve observed as the years go by is that at whatever point in your life you experience this stuff all the silly drama manifests, especially if you’re in a group setting like SRPL was.

When we arrived at SRPL a group of friends seemed to gradually “cocoon” around us in the first year. Soon, a few of us were dating some of the girls and as the group became larger, well…let’s just say not everyone loved everyone else. Friction ensued and mini-dramas popped up here and there like little wildfires.

There were such a disparate number of personalities that all this was inevitable, I suppose. I’m certainly guilty of not handling certain incidents well and maintaining loyalty to certain individuals and throwing others to the wolves. After a few years dealing with my dramas and my friends dramas there were moments where I felt like, “This is what I wanted so badly??”

Those first 2-3 years at SRPL were fraught with drama and then I was lucky enough to experience drama from other quarters, which got to be a little too much for me to handle. Things started to cool down after a time. The larger SRPL group didn’t really last very long in the grand scheme. Eventually, we kind of ended up back where we started – just us guys. I enjoyed the quiet.

There was certainly more drama to be had, right up until I left. In fact, drama is what sent me packing from SRPL. But a funny thing happened when I came back four years later. I was the older guy watching and listening to the dramas of my younger colleagues and smiling that “oh how quaint” smile as they related their stories and I wondered if I could pay my mortgage or how I would buy a new car when my wife’s died, or how I would deal with my insane neighbor who I called the cops on.

I’m not saying that their drama was somehow less than mine - just different, no less real and no less meaningful. It’s a rite of passage. And I’m also not claiming I’m above the dramas and personality conflicts that occur between human beings now as I approach 40. I wish I was, but I am surely not.

What I will say is that I shun drama as much as possible now in the light of the issues that confront most people my age who are married and have families, but more than 20 years ago when I arrived at SRPL I was lapping it up with a spoon like a kid who had just discovered ice cream.