We joke around in my circles about which of us is “the glue.” In my daughter’s friend circle, Stephen says he’s the glue, but it’s probably his wife, Heather, a vivacious school nurse and a sister Aquarian.

In pop culture, the glue refers to the magnetic personality that attracts the rest of us, but the glue is also fluid and ideological. It might be a passion, a cause, or a shared experience.  In my daughter’s friend circle, two of the members attended the same high school. The rest of us joined the circle later like an expanding and contracting Venn diagram of people that is subject to the force of change. Sometimes someone in the circle moves away and falls out of touch. Or someone gets insulted and leaves. Or someone partners up with an objectionable mate the rest of us can’t stand. Sometimes someone just needs a break for personal, private reasons.

A circle can break into random points, though lines and parabolas are possible. When I think of individuals who are the glue for me, I think of excellent editors I’ve worked with, like Donna J. Long, who continues to lead the production team at Kestrel: A Journal of Art and Literature, and who I worked with as fiction editor for sixteen years. Lisa Lanser Rose, the founding editor of the Gloria Sirens collective, is also the glue for me. Without her leadership and guidance, my writing experiment with the Sirens would never have come into being. Literacy in its broadest sense is the glue for my writing circles, which include editors, writers, poets, and readers.

In families, the old folks are frequently the glue. Often, they own the home where the menagerie gathers—all the relatives—like them or not. When the old folks kick the bucket or sell the farm, who hosts the gatherings then? No one else has a large enough house, or a patio for grilling and dining, or a field to park all the cars. But new old folks in a family come of age all the time, like me, and the menagerie may carry on.

I’m part of many circles, including the 1980 class of Greenville High School in Greenville, Texas, the glue being graduation. Some of my memories of high school resemble the film Dazed and Confused (1993): keg parties at secret wooded locations, older guys cruising past the school to try to pick up teenage girls, and the cliques, the cool kids, rich kids, stoners, jocks, nerds, band geeks, and of course, prom royalty and their court.

When I think of the worst parts of high school, I think of the Ring of striving children at Recess in Dickinson’s poem #479. It’s not a happy vision of education. The Ring sounds like a Recess brawl with a mob of competing children. Inevitably, emotional blood is drawn. It’s no wonder that later in life, not every student attends class reunions, which are traditionally held every ten years after a cohort graduates.

When my 10^th high school reunion rolled around, I skipped it. I was in a difficult, transitional phase that included a divorce. By the time the 20^th reunion was in the works, life felt more on track, so I traveled one thousand miles to attend the two-day reunion in good, old Greenville, Texas, a bedroom community of Dallas. Our graduating class was over four hundred strong, and around a quarter of us attended. Threads of high school cliquishness were still apparent, and I enjoyed meeting up with friends, some of whom I’d known since grade school. Our 30^th reunion was even better because my dearest friend from high school joined in. I might have attended our 40^th reunion, but Covid-19 struck in 2020 and pretty much ruined any gathering. Which is why this year, 2025, a 45^th reunion is planned.

Circles can lose the glue. A circle can feel like a noose once the glue is lost. Maybe there’s even anti-glue, circles we never want to join: the Klan, the Nazis, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Taliban, and the politicos known as Trumpers. I shouldn’t be surprised that so many of my former graduating classmates are Trumpers considering how red Texas is. What is surprising is the level of hatemongering and conspiracy theories my former classmates post on social media. For example, a class officer, chief organizer of reunions, posted a video of President Joe Biden walking past a white wall. When he does, his white hair blends into the background, which she offered as proof that Biden had really died, and America was being led by a hologram! She worships RFK Jr. and believes vaccines will harm/kill you! Our class president posted a video of a young woman sweetly threatening that anyone who participated in the No Kings protest on June 14, 2025, would subsequently be arrested.

We are no longer fb friends, but I check the class officer’s page sometimes just to see what outrageous claims she’ll post next and to see which former classmates agree with her. One of her latest posts is a ChatGPT-generated paragraph (self-confessed) that proves former President Barack Obama dropped more bombs during his two terms than President tRump has dropped, though I’m not sure what the point is. tRump good, Obama bad? I think that’s the black/white assessment she’s getting at.

The Trumpers on her page love her. They ask permission to share the posts and make comments, like, “The Left is so Full of S@&$.” Hello, Todd, I’m right here. I remember in high school when you told me I was too poor to smoke the quality weed you preferred, Acapulco Gold, as we called it. Yeah, you were a high school football hero with money to spend on drugs. Haven’t you learned that when you put people down to raise yourself up, your platform has sand as its foundation? The absurd “facts” and excremental speech expressed by former classmates on social media are worthy of a rewrite of the #1 Billboard Hot 100 hit song, “Harper Valley PTA.”

It’s a crying shame the elected officers of the class of 1980 think a classmate like me would ever want to join their Trumper ranks. Screw the glue, I’d rather freeze the circle and chip it into ice cubes for cocktails for the few classmates I will miss. I hope y’all have a great time at the 45th reunion. This year, it’s not for me.