AL WEGNER

In our senior video, Al mentions that "many" of us knew him as "Mel." But it was a long story that he didn't want to get into.

Mel? That was news to me.

I met Al in freshman year. We shared a homeroom together throughout high school. Al seemed like a nice enough guy who wanted to fit in and be accepted. But overall, he was shunned by the masses. Perhaps it was because he was somewhat on the larger side. I don't know.

In homeroom once, Mike Zeman came up to Richard in hysterics. He handed Richard Al's glasses, and said, "I just took these right off his face." Why Mike found that to be as incredibly funny as he did, I'll never know.

Al was not the athletic type. But wanting to belong, he became one of the student managers to some of the school football or basketball teams. He was also in charge of some video equipment, and had the job of filming many of the school's activities.

In our freshman year, I once heard Al mention to someone that he used to be really good friends with Shawn Rappley. But he was saddened by the fact that for whatever reason, Shawn didn't talk to him anymore. I got the feeling that once high school began, Shawn had aspirations of popularity. And hanging out with Al Wegner would hold him back. That's sad. In fact, I had Shawn in algebra class that year. And I overheard him say to Jeff Bodwin (talking about Al) "That kid has tits!" As mentioned above, Al was a little on the big side, and apparently was cursed with "man boobs." That's probably why Al always (and I do mean always... every single day) wore two layers of clothes on his upper torso. He either wore a T-shirt and a big flannel shirt, or a T-shirt with a sweatshirt.

In our junior year, Joe Antonie told me something interesting about Al. Joe lived right next door to Al. Apparently as kids, Al was a beanpole, and was the most athletic guy in the neighborhood. I was shocked! Then Al developed kidney stones. It sent him to the hospital and laid him up for quite awhile. For whatever reason, it seemed to screw up his body, as Al gained a massive amount of weight in a very short time. He never lost it.

In our junior year, I had Al in Ms. Neveau's speech class. For his first few speeches, Al would finish by saying something like "It wasn't very good." This drove Ms. Neveau nuts! You never end a speech by critiquing your own performance - and critique it in a negative light at that. Despite being scolded, Al continued to say something similar for two additional speeches before finally wising up. The last time he did it, his speech was a demonstration speech on how to use the school's video camera. He wrapped it up by explaining what he'd just demonstrated, and finished again with "It wasn't very good." Ms. Neveau put her head down and shook it back and forth.

In our senior year, I happened to find myself over at Joe Antonie's house. Joe had told me that from one of his upstairs windows, he could see right into the Wegner's bathroom, and could actually watch them take a shit if he wanted to. I was anxious to see. But alas, the Wegner's had put up a curtain by that time.

After high school, I ran into Al many times at the video store. I think I even rented him some porno films on several occasions. He was working at a factory of some sort, where I believe he still works today. I don't think he's married or has any children.

Here's a tidbit. Five years after graduation, our class had a reunion. I did not attend. However, the weekend of the reunion, Meff just happened to be in town. So on a whim, after work (I was still working at T&R Video) we drove over to the VFW Hall where the reunion was taking place. I was in my dad's truck. And he happened to have binoculars in there. So we spied on the festivities for awhile. I'm pretty sure I saw Lee Jacquart and Mark Ciha take a piss outside. But I digress. We noticed that Al was in attendance. Several hours later, at about 3:00 in the morning, we decided to call Al to quiz him on the events of the reunion. We woke him up. But he spoke with us for about 20 minutes. Not once did we mention who we were. And not once did he even care to ask. Perhaps he was still half alseep.