Nary a blast from the past

After living away for nine years, I finally moved back to Cincinnati in July 2006.

Since that time, I've re-acclimated to being a Cincinnatian. I eat at Skyline at least twice a week, I've been to Reds games, shouted "Who Dey" as a greeting and complained about the traffic on I-71 and I-75 and I-275. And as for my family, the majority of which lives here in Cincinnati, I've seen more of them in the past year and a half than I have in the past decade.

But it wasn't until my best friend made an offhand comment one night at a bar that I realized I was missing a crucial element of my Cincinnati homecoming: I haven't seen anyone I went to high school with.

I graduated from Lakota. (Not Lakota East, nor West. Just plain old Lakota.) There were over 600 people in my graduating class. Add in the number of students at the high school who were in grades either ahead or behind mine and, well, that's just a hell of a lot of people.

Now, I'm not actively seeking out people I went to high school with. If I really wanted to find someone, I could always look on MySpace or Facebook or Classmates.com. I could have attended my 10-year-reunion, which I skipped. And I'm not using this column as a solicitation to hear back from anybody I might have shared second period with back in 1995.

Still, I'm surprised I haven't casually run into anyone I went to school with. Not at a bar during the holidays. Not at a store. Not downtown. Not a soul.

Even more shocking is that when I lived in California, I ran into not only one, but two people I went to high school with. I was 2,000 miles away, on the far side of the continent, yet there they were, two Lakota alums, living close to me in "Kal-ee-fornia."

I've bumped into my best elementary school chum whom I hadn't seen in 12 years. I hang out with old college friends who aren't native to Cincinnati. I've had e-mails from people asking me if I was indeed related to other Necessarys. I've passed by old teachers on the street. But nary a former student from Lakota has crossed my path. (Disclaimer: I did run into one person from high school since I've been back. He delivered a pizza to me. But we also went to college together, so it doesn't count.)

Then again, perhaps there have been former classmates I've seen, but I just didn't know it at the time. I wasn't one of the popular kids in high school, and I hung out mostly with the journalism nerds. And Lakota was a big school. I only knew a fraction of the at least 2,000 students I went to school with. And if you count in all the brain cells I've offed since I discovered the wonders of beer, well, then it's quite possible my life is swarming with former Thunderbirds.

There is one good aspect to all of this, though. With no one from my past coming up to me randomly on the street, I don't have to pretend to remember someone when I actually don't. I'm terrible with names.

Kevin Necessary is a designer for CiN Weekly and 1997 graduate of Lakota High School.