On June 5, 2026, the top music story was the reunion of country group Florida Georgia Line. But another, theoretically less notable reunion changed my life that day.
It could be a setup to a joke or a clickbait headline: Two musicians and former enemies walked into a high school graduation ceremony. What happened next will shock you.
The reality is a little more complicated. We weren’t enemies, but we sure were mean to each other as kids. I’m grateful that has changed.
***
At what could be the final graduation ceremony for our high school, my friend, rapper and musician Rich Jones, was recognized as the school’s Distinguished Alum for 2026.
I ended up sitting with his parents and partner in the front row of the gymnasium for the ceremony, and I couldn’t help but tear up remembering where we were at our graduation twenty years before.
As I’ve written elsewhere, I cried my eyes out the day before I graduated high school: I hadn’t made one real friend my age the entire time. It was painful to realize, but when I got onstage the following day, I was grinning ear to ear for two reasons: one, I was finally getting out, and two, I’d had a conversation before the ceremony with my academic advisor that practically renewed my faith in humanity.
My advisor emphatically encouraged me to not try to affiliate with the popular students at the college I would attend in two months. She emphasized how there were other disliked kids at our high school whom I’d sparsely interacted with, and she was right: they could’ve used my support in such a small environment where they felt alone, too.
I carried that lesson with me to Earlham College, a liberal arts school in a small town in the American Midwest, and Rich carried his own lessons to Lawrence University . . . a liberal arts school in a small town in the American Midwest.
At our high school, Rich and I were actively horrible to each other. I realize now that not only was the social environment deeply unhealthy, but also neither of us fit in any neat boxes people used to categorize each other–and we both reacted by actively treating each other like shit.
I won’t lie: I love that school for the opportunities I got there, but I hated every day of my life there. The culture of apathy among students and some faculty was palpable: certain people were loved by most bullies for not doing their jobs–and kids who stood out paid a price in unending cruelty.
I came home enraged every day, but I had at least one unusual resource: my grandmother, who called me every day after school for four years. I don’t know who Rich had. He played sports, even starting a short lived baseball team at the school, while I have coordination disabilities, but I suspect we both felt like we had nobody our age who cared about us.
We also, however, lived for music. I was a stubborn contrarian posing for a time as a hipster who loved British indie rock, more often parroting VH1 countdowns speaking about music I hadn’t heard (either). I grew up on American folk and rock of my parents’ generation, but Rich always loved hip hop. I remember him rapping, “Je m’appelle Slim Shady” after French class when Eminem was in his heyday (it’s “My Name Is”). We had plenty of arguments about the Beatles, but I found out later that as esoteric as I sounded, constantly reminded that I was a freak, Rich felt like a square peg in a round hole, too.
By the end of high school, I had started to finally accept my autism diagnosis of a few years earlier. I must have had an awfully strong resolve that kept me from killing myself–or anyone else–because I knew that college had to be better. As it turns out, I was right.
When I set foot on my college campus as a student in August 2006, not only did I find my first friends my age, but I came out as gay at a student storytelling event for New Student Orientation. People told me it was one of the bravest things they’d ever seen–the polar opposite of my experience early in high school. I had always wanted friends, and acceptance turned out to be a dream that came true.
I still have trouble believing my life had come that far in four years. I had no friends my age for eighteen years, and then at my college graduation ceremony, hundreds of people stood up and cheered for me–and I hadn’t touched alcohol or drugs once, but I had carried my advisor’s advice with me to reach out across social groups and demographics. It paid off–majorly. Someone told me, “There are many people who are grateful that you exist on this campus.” That was some newsflash. I also had made a deliberate effort to treat people differently than I had been treated–and how I had sometimes treated others, including Rich.
In years since, a lot has happened, but Rich reached out to me on social media in 2016, and we apologized to each other about how we had acted as kids. I still have anger over some things that happened at that school, but anything with him is not among them.
***
When I saw Rich at graduation three days ago, he said that he’s explained our high school to others as a mix of really smart kids with no social skills and kids who couldn’t get in anywhere else. He said I had social skills–which is definitely not how I remember it–but both of us were made mean by the surrounding toxicity.
Hearing him say I had social skills then felt like one of the kindest things anybody has ever said about how I acted as a kid. Hearing that from Rich gave me significant perspective. I guess I wasn’t as much a social freak as I remembered.
I can still be hard on myself about past pain, including how I’ve treated others, but Rich showed me that I don’t need to be. Talk about a lesson from an unlikely source. Without specifying why or how we were cruel, suffice it to say that there are a couple lines from singer-songwriter Patty Griffin that, out of context, remind me of us: “I hated every day of high school/ It’s funny, I guess you did, too.”
***
As I walked up to that school building on Friday, the song playing on my phone was Toby Keith’s ‘90s country hit, “How Do You Like Me Now?!” an appropriate anthem for me–us–returning to a site of struggle from when we were kids.
Now, as a music historian, I’ve immersed myself in country music, soul, and jazz for a couple decades, while Rich has carved a sizable niche for himself in hip hop, for which I lost track of trends a long time ago. I occasionally write songs, and I have three that I’m exceptionally proud of, but gratefully, rapping is not in my repertoire.
Rich, though, has serious skills as an MC, and he knows how to build relationships in and out of the music world–much more than even me in the writing world–and I have a TEDx talk and dozens and dozens of publications.
After he was introduced to give his commencement address, he stressed the importance of expanding one’s network by “introducing yourself earnestly” and how he “became an extreme extrovert” in pursuit of his career. It’s fair to say that he is light years ahead of where he was in high school, as am I.
He noted an optimism in the world when we graduated in 2006 that is largely absent today. He also stressed the urgency of this moment of financial crisis that our high school is in.
I had nothing but pride for how far he’s come. He always loved history and baseball, but seeing his dreams come true and watching him impart wisdom from his years of experience to graduating high school seniors was like we were on a whole other planet. I was beaming–and crying.
After the ceremony, he invited me out to dinner with his family and partner, and we reminisced about students from our time: some who have changed, some who were on seriously troubled paths and never diverged from them.
I’m sure glad we did, though. Rich drove me home, and during the ride, I talked about how much pain my family had been in because of high school, with people binge eating over how I was treated.
I also told him about my suicide attempt in 2011, after I’d come home from college, haunted by childhood trauma. He reached over for a hug and said, “I’m so glad you’re still here.”
“Me, too, man. Me, too.”
Postscript: I wrote this essay in June, but the school closed by the end of the summer. I am glad I got to be a part of that last graduation ceremony with my friend.
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Previously Published on Spectrum Sounds
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