Well, I did the unthinkable today. In a spare moment I Googled "Skutch." Interesting side note, there's an Australian punk band named Skutch. But sure enough, the MSN Communities page for the Skutch guys pulled up and I went and checked it out.

Aside from seeing that Garrett apparently got married, it was about what I expected. I suppose the regretable thing, either in a fit of nostalgia or self-pity, I applied for membership. I always swore when I left high school, I'd leave it for good. Partly because that was the "cynical" thing to do and I desperately wanted to be cynical in high school. It made me aloof and grown-up. Ironically of course I was neither.

So let me explain. Skutch was the name for our group of friends at Davis High. I don't even know if I dare say "our." I was accepted into the group at the end of my junior year -- the year I began attending Davis and many months after the group officially formed. Most of the guys that originally made up Skutch had been friends since kindergarten or before. But a few outsiders were able to slip in because of the high school's demogrpahic. Students at Davis either lived in Farmington or Kaysville. Skutch was the melding of two groups of boyhood friends -- one from Farmington, the other from Kaysville. So if you weren't from either, you could just kind of slip in through the cracks.

At the time, I loved Skutch. The group was atypical for high school. The guys in the group had yet to have their first kiss, sarcasm and dry wit were the most important traits to embody and most important they bucked the trends, the fads, the trappings of high school life through bizarre and attention-getting stunts at assemblies and in the hallways between class. Having moved from a high school in Colorado where the in-crowd was the only crowd, I lived for mocking and sending-up the status quo.

But for the same reason, many despised Skutch. The group was seen as arrogant and preppy -- you know, too cool for school. And in a lot of respects we were. But Skutch allowed us to be cool without having to bandwagon with the in-crowd.

Anyway, the group survived graduation. We had a newsletter of sorts that cirrculated while we were all on our missions. I ended up attending college at BYU and few of the Skutch guys were there. So I kept in touch. But when I finally graduated from college, that was it. I had heard that some of the guys had started the MSN page, but I never joined. It was a lot of hassle, but deep down I think it was because I always felt like I was never truly a part of Skutch because I hadn't grown up in Farmington or Kaysville. Some of my best friends in high school ame out of the group, but the Skutch ringleaders I never got close to.

And yet, coming across that same MSN page today, I felt compelled to sign up. I'm 10 years out of high school. In fact, I missed the 10 year class reunion -- in part because I wanted to maintain that aloofness I believed made me cool 10 years ago. But I think I missed it because I was nervous I'd show up and realize I'm not that close to the Skutch guys, which means the good friends I thought I had in high school, I didn't really have and in the end I was just a geek, a wannabe. so maybe joining the Skutch community is my way of testing the waters, finding out if I really do have a place or not with these guys. The most distrubing thing to me is realizing 10 years out, I'm still feeling compelled to find that acceptance. How strange.