NICOLE BAUGNIET

What was the deal with Nikki Baugniet? I don't know.

Nikki was around at Magee, Clarke and Washington. To the best of my knowledge, I never had her in a single class, at any level. She may have had some special education classes. I don't know. She seemed very weird to me - like she wasn't all there.

About the only thing I can remember about her was something from the end of 5th grade. Each of the three fifth grade classes were taken on a bus over to Clarke, so we could get a small tour of the middle school we'd all be attending the next year. As my class was standing in line in the hall, between Mr. Spatz' room and Ms. Hynek's room, Nikki stumbled by us, on her way back from her visit to Clarke. She was really loud, laughing, and incoherently mumbling something about Clarke. Everyone looked at her as if she was deranged. Whatever she said made no sense at all. After she left, even Ms. Krause replied, "What was that?" I have no idea.

Nikki did in fact graduate with us. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. I believe she still lives with her parents in Two Rivers. Nikki had a younger brother, class of 1992's Marc Baugniet - who also appears to be living with them. What she does for a living is unknown to me.

UPDATE - 6/18/07 - Yesterday, Kevin Dehne and I stopped by to see Nikki. Her mom greeted us, then went in to get her. Apparently she was taking a nap. When she came out, she eventually recognized me. I'm not sure if she remembered Kevin or not. But we she stood and talked with us for quite awhile. She pretty much looks exactly the same. She said that she does a lot of babysitting these days.

She said she'd heard of this blog, as Jill Jansky had told her about it. But to date, she hadn't seen it. She said that in high school, she was kind of irritated at how "cliquey" it was. She maintained that she always talked to everybody, regardless of social status.

She had a lot of stories about growing up in her neighborhood. Amazingly, her block was filled with tons of people from our class - Shane Peterson, Jeremy Karman, Cindy Rohrer, Sheila Vanne and Cory Schultz. She still sees some of them from time to time. She even said she'd been to a wedding recently that felt like a high school reunion, as so many of our classmates were in attendance. Before we left, we took a few pictures. You can see them below.