I found the

coolest website the other day - https://classmates.com . Inever, ever pay

for anything on the web but this was the first time I

entered my credit card (within a few numbers anyway) and

forked over $25 to register. The site is for people to

register by state and city where they went to school and

to find former classmates who have also registered. A

stalker's Xanadu, I'm sure.

My intentions are not quite

that ambitious. Actually, I just want to reminisce about

an era of my life that's moving farther and farther away.

And what an era it was. Being a teenager in the '70s was

none too groovy. Imagine the sexiness in having the life

goal to look like Greg Brady or date someone as cool as

Marcia.

My plaid bell bottoms were

so wide at the bottom that when I walked down the hall of

my high school they flapped together sounding like

someone beating a carpet clean on the line. My wavy hair

was so long that when I would blow it dry to straighten

it, it turned out looking more like Dorothy Hamill than

Bobby Sherman.

I guess I feel searching

for old classmates will give me some idea of my identity

of who I was back then. I hardly know who I am now, so to

go to the root is always a good place to start.

Back in my high school

years, I was hardly the popular person I would later in

life narcissistically imagine myself to be. I did play

football and baseball and was the typical class clown who

grew to have the same note on every test paper:

"Does not live up to potential." My teachers

always said one of two things to me. It was either,

"Could you stop talking and pay attention," or,

"Billy, your Butterfinger is melting through your

pants, again."

As most kids back then were

driving around in "muscle" cars listening to

8-tracks of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, I was riding with

my lone friend, Jimmy Branton, in his skid truck. A skid

truck is a converted dump truck that has tilting railroad

irons on the chassis to ramp and winch up old cars. His

dad owned a junk yard and after school we used to drive

around and offer people $25 to remove old cars out of

their yards. I tell this boring story to dispel any doubt

that I was the biggest dweeb that ever had a Linda

Rondstadt poster in his room.

I really didn't know who I

would find logging onto classmates.com. It is hard for me

to tell how many people from my youth would have

computers and e-mail. I imagine, some are yet to get

paved roads to their house. I can't judge, though: to

others I am laughable because I don't have a cell phone.

The biggest surprise I

found on the site was my younger sister had registered

there. And here I was, thinking I was patriarch of the

Internet in my family, yet she beat me to it. But should

little sisters have the screen name, "2Hot4U"?

I contacted a few old

classmates and got some e-mails back already and it has

been fun. It has mostly just been a reminder that life

goes on and like me they've moved past staying up all

night and sleeping the day away. Okay, so I haven't moved

past that, but it has been satisfying imagining others

growing old like me. So just like then, we were all made

one by polyester, today we can be made one by Grecian

Formula.

[Visit Billy Murphy on

the Internet at billymurphy.homepage.com]