Bruce Monahan

Hello fellow allumni of GCHS South! Alex was kind enough to send me an e-mail directing me to the reunion blog (Thanks Alex!). It appears I was part of a list of missing allumni (funny I don't feel missing). You probably will remember me as being the guy in class sitting in the next to the last row .. you know? ... fourth one from the left? ... the knucklehead facing the wrong direction (story of my life!). So, thirty years since graduation .... Wow! Where has all the time gone? It seems like it was only yesterday ... I remember ... I was doing my laundry ... oh wait a minute that was yesterday (cue rim shot). It's actually been great reading some of the blogs that were posted here. It's good to see that with all the trial and tribulations some of you have encountered, that you have all come out on top. I guess since Alex asked for more blog entries that I would add my "life story" to the mix as well. Warning ... the following is full of lame attempts at humor ... read at your own risk.

My Life Story
I am originally from my mom (I'm sure we can all relate to that) and forcibly evicted from my first home after just nine months and sent to live in a grand old place called "the world". So I ventured out on my own with nothing more then a bottle, a rattle, and a god-awful smell coming from my diaper. I spent my formulative years at Parkview Elementary where I excelled at eating crayons and banging erasers. And yes, all at the same time. Somehow I graduated from there and moved on to Coolidge Junior High. Crayon eating was highly discouraged by them, so I had to move on to something else. I tried sniffing glue but almost drowned a few times (I guess they didn't mean Elmers) ... so I excelled at eating paste and licking my fingers. Somehow I also graduated from Coolidge and moved on to GCHS. I spent the next four years dealing with pimples, random body hairs, and the embarrassment from the pitch of my voice fluctuating three full octaves everytime I said something. Good times ... good times indeed. I guess I was a middle-of-the-road student. Was I athletically gifted? - Nope. How about academically inclined? - More declined then inclined I would say. Popular? - I guess many people thought my last name was "who" because they would always say "Bruce who?". Perhaps I was a "ladies man"? - wait, wait ...let me catch my breath because that one cracked me up. So what did I do in high school? Well, somehow I ended up in the theater department. This was strange because my acting talent was once compared to Keanu Reeves trying to do Shakspeare, but somehow I stayed with it. After graduation I then did a stint at SIU until it came to my second year. I was trying to prove the theory that pure osmosis could be used to gain a higher degree of knowledge withough actually attending classes ... um? ... I'm still working on trying to get that theory to work. I sure wish they would have offered a degree in "Student Center". Shortly after my abrupt college run I moved to Florida where I have been ever since. About ten years ago I doodled some cartoons and staked my corner on the world wide web with a site called "pencilwedgees". For about the past five years I have been a freelance cartoonist/3-d animator. As soon as I make another 999,999 more dollars I will become a millionaire. But for right now I guess I can be labeled as a "dollaraire" (before taxes). I guess I will shut up now. If you have read everything to this point then I must say congratulations and I'm sorry that you are having a really slow day. I won't be able to attend the reunion this year unfortunately. Maybe in another ten years I will have the opportunity. By then there should be flying cars and teleportation pods scattered everywhere ... and perhaps my osmosis theory will be perfected by then. Best of luck to everyone and have a great time at the reunion party ... oh and if anyone takes any photos of allumni highly inebriated and passed out in the corner or any of them dancing with lamp shades on their head, I would really like to see them. Take care everyone ... Bruce