The Terrible Catsafterme

Looking at the photo at left, it’s not hard to see how I could’ve had a major crush on Jackie Moore during high school. I first met Jackie at Skateworld, the same place that I first met Kim Cummings, Lori Tobias, and other Ferguson freshman girls. At the time, Jackie was dating another friend from our ‘group’ of ruffians, Terry “Pineapple” Fisher. During the rest of my tenth grade year, we all hung out together on weekends (usually at SkateWorld or some parentless-house party or prowling the streets of Pebble Creek) and then quite a bit into the Summer. Jackie and Pineapple broke up eventually, and she began dating my other friend Mark Howard. Mark moved to another state during that Summer of ‘88.

When my junior year began, Jackie and the other girls all started going to Beavercreek High School as well, so we hung out even more often. Along with Carl Lichtenburg, Jennifer Crum, Mark’s brother Scott Howard, and many others, Jackie and I also worked together at the insane fast food establishement Hardee’s during the latter half of ‘88. It was during this time that we became especially close and hung out quite often - without ever actually dating. Time and circumstances prevented us from ever getting together…and then in early 1989, I began dating Christi.

Jackie, me, and Christi heading out for Trick or Treat in 1989.

This still did not prevent Jackie and I from remaining friends. During my senior year, she began dating yet another good friend of mine, Mike Minges, and of course, Jackie and Christi remained friends for many years. In fact, they lived together for a couple of years up until 2001, so there were ample opportunites over the years for us to hang out together. By this time, Christi and Jackie had a parting of the ways, I got married again, and we completely lost contact with one another for about six years.

When I first began contacting old friends to fulfill my ‘reunion resolution,’ Jackie was one of the first old friends I attempted to reach. It took nearly five months to finally get a successful response. She was busily raising her own adorable three-year-old little girl Grace, and still living in Dayton. Once we were able to chat over the phone on Saturday, May 26, she almost immediately came over and brought along her little girl for me to visit with. It was great to reminisce and catch up after so many years. Jackie, like many of my friends, has a pretty sharp memory when it comes to recalling so many of the good (and often ridiculous) times we had and crazy things we did. After a while she left to take Gracie to her Mom’s and stop at her place to pick up some old photos.

That night she came back with her old photo album and I scanned in some of the great photos she had. Although there were none of the two of us together, there were a couple interesting shots of me at BHS and some nice ones of her and many other of our friends. Then things began to get slightly surreal. We decided to go out to eat at Thai 9 restaurant where we enjoyed a nice sushi dinner. We chose this place because Carl Lichtenburg was a waiter there - and on this night, he bussed our table. After dinner, we went just next door to the Oregon Express to see our mutual friend Kim Cummings. She and her husband Eric were playing in the band eric Metronome on that particular evening. Carl came over after he got off work and we had a reunion-of-sorts of four of us from the old BHS / Pebble Creek days. How cool was that!?!

Kim, me, and Jackie at the Oregon Express

Carl shows up and makes it a foursome

It was wonderful to see Jackie again, and I hope we can continue to hang out. Naturally, we have discussed the prospect of the ultimate reunion of getting even more of us together for an evening, but for now, I find it amazing - and I am thankful - to have four of us together in one place. If only Christi hadn’t been traveling in Florida…

Continue with 2007…

Continue with the next reunion…

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 6:08 am and is filed under 1980's - Late, 1990's - Early, Reunions, 2000's - Late. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.