Things Past
During my hiatus over the past few months, I had an interesting experience: My 20th high school reunion (yes, kids, I'm THAT old) took place in a small 1-horse town in upstate NY. Yes, the REAL upstate - north of the Adirondack park. Spittin' distance from Canada in the woods. No, not Buffalo. No, not Albany...this is six hours northeast of the former and four hours north of the latter.
In other words, you gotta want to go there. REALLY gotta want to go there.
So, after months of figuring out what everyone's schedules were going to be for that summer, I decided to go. I thought I might not go at first. Part of it was spending the money, the hassle of travel, etc. But, on the other side of the coin, I only see these people (well, at least those who show up) once about every ten years, so I figured if I amortized that cost over ten years, it came out to be a pretty cheap ticket.
My wife influenced me too. Of course her influence came in the form of, "you can do what you want, but I have absolutely no desire to go to a reunion ever again." See, she went to her 20th a few years ago. She even had a good time, as it was her first one. She skipped her 10th, because she was in a bad place in her life at the time and didn't want to answer all of the "so, what do you do now, are you married, do you have kids..." questions. But, this time she decided to go and her best friend drove down with her family and we went. It was fun meeting her old friends, watching her flit from group to group while her best friend's husband and I sat on the sidelines eating appetizers. The next day we got to visit her old school, which was a LOT different than mine. However, after all of the hoopla of that weekend, she decided that she keeps in touch with the people she likes and could easily go the rest of her life without seeing the rest. And, she probably has a point. As I got to learn about the people she went to high school with that weekend, it appeared that they formed the same cliques once again 20 years later. Some things never change, I guess. This was readily apparent during the Saturday night dinner.
Someone threw together a REALLY poorly constructed slide show displaying classmates from those past few years of high school. But, it was like someone just took a shoe box full of old Polaroids and a cheap scanner and went to town. Then, where I had to laugh hysterically, was that there was a boom box blaring with hits from the 80's that was so poorly mixed, it could have been done by my two-year old and sounded better (Go Wonder Pets!). To me, it was like nails on a chalkboard after being a DJ for ten years. Have you ever heard of a mixer or, at the VERY least, the word 'fade'? Grr. Oh, and BTW...where's that compilation we paid for Reunion Committee? The wife is still shaking her head over that one. And, would you want it even if you got it after seeing the high quality slide show/mix tape crap you threw together at the last minute?
Oh, yeah, there is a point to all of this, which is that the entire 'montage' (for lack of a less kind word) consisted of basically the same people over and over again. The sporties and class officers, mostly. A few geeks thrown in just to make them feel like they were part of the crowd. But, I remember my wife remarking that that the class size was like 400 people and there was NO WAY that they went through that number of pics. Even I started recognizing people in the montage and I didn't even know any of them.
Anyway, my wife had her fun, checked the box, and was ready to move on with never seeing these people again.
So, now it was my turn and she didn't see the point in spending the money or taking the time. However, my situation is different. Much smaller school (I graduated with 26 people...and that included me) and we had a really good time at the 10th. So, I decided to go.
Only a few people actually live out of state...with a class that size, I guess that's not surprising, really. In order to mitigate the fact that the class size was so small and that we knew that maybe half of the class would show up, we expanded our little reunion to include the class before and the class after ours, since we were all close back in the day anyway. Like I said, it was a small school (400 kids -- maybe -- K-12), as opposed to the 400 or so my wofe had just in her class.
And, you know what? I had a great time. I'm really glad I went. We pre-partied a bit Friday night (necessary, of course, including some mean karaoke), spent some time with the 'rents Saturday, Saturday night got to see everyone get their drink on and helped out with the Sunday afternoon family day. There were some surprises, too. One of my best friends in high school who died a while back...well, his sister was there. I had no idea who she was at first. Quite shocking how good she looked and how much she'd changed from the little sister we grew up with and who used to run around and terrorize us. Others, too, looked good and seem to be aging quite nicely. Oh hell, we all are, really. And, for those who couldn't or didn't want to be there. I wish them well. Especially my buddy Ev. It would have been GREAT to see him. But, apparently, word is that he decided he would never live in the United States again because the laws are too, um, restrictive in some capacities, so I guess he's enjoying life in Thailand.
Those that organized this even say that they want to start doing them every 5 years. I could get behind that. And, you know that the people who showed up will show up in the future, barring any unforeseen circumstances, deaths, and such. Any excuse to drink in the north country is a good one.
-la
In other words, you gotta want to go there. REALLY gotta want to go there.
So, after months of figuring out what everyone's schedules were going to be for that summer, I decided to go. I thought I might not go at first. Part of it was spending the money, the hassle of travel, etc. But, on the other side of the coin, I only see these people (well, at least those who show up) once about every ten years, so I figured if I amortized that cost over ten years, it came out to be a pretty cheap ticket.
My wife influenced me too. Of course her influence came in the form of, "you can do what you want, but I have absolutely no desire to go to a reunion ever again." See, she went to her 20th a few years ago. She even had a good time, as it was her first one. She skipped her 10th, because she was in a bad place in her life at the time and didn't want to answer all of the "so, what do you do now, are you married, do you have kids..." questions. But, this time she decided to go and her best friend drove down with her family and we went. It was fun meeting her old friends, watching her flit from group to group while her best friend's husband and I sat on the sidelines eating appetizers. The next day we got to visit her old school, which was a LOT different than mine. However, after all of the hoopla of that weekend, she decided that she keeps in touch with the people she likes and could easily go the rest of her life without seeing the rest. And, she probably has a point. As I got to learn about the people she went to high school with that weekend, it appeared that they formed the same cliques once again 20 years later. Some things never change, I guess. This was readily apparent during the Saturday night dinner.
Someone threw together a REALLY poorly constructed slide show displaying classmates from those past few years of high school. But, it was like someone just took a shoe box full of old Polaroids and a cheap scanner and went to town. Then, where I had to laugh hysterically, was that there was a boom box blaring with hits from the 80's that was so poorly mixed, it could have been done by my two-year old and sounded better (Go Wonder Pets!). To me, it was like nails on a chalkboard after being a DJ for ten years. Have you ever heard of a mixer or, at the VERY least, the word 'fade'? Grr. Oh, and BTW...where's that compilation we paid for Reunion Committee? The wife is still shaking her head over that one. And, would you want it even if you got it after seeing the high quality slide show/mix tape crap you threw together at the last minute?
Oh, yeah, there is a point to all of this, which is that the entire 'montage' (for lack of a less kind word) consisted of basically the same people over and over again. The sporties and class officers, mostly. A few geeks thrown in just to make them feel like they were part of the crowd. But, I remember my wife remarking that that the class size was like 400 people and there was NO WAY that they went through that number of pics. Even I started recognizing people in the montage and I didn't even know any of them.
Anyway, my wife had her fun, checked the box, and was ready to move on with never seeing these people again.
So, now it was my turn and she didn't see the point in spending the money or taking the time. However, my situation is different. Much smaller school (I graduated with 26 people...and that included me) and we had a really good time at the 10th. So, I decided to go.
Only a few people actually live out of state...with a class that size, I guess that's not surprising, really. In order to mitigate the fact that the class size was so small and that we knew that maybe half of the class would show up, we expanded our little reunion to include the class before and the class after ours, since we were all close back in the day anyway. Like I said, it was a small school (400 kids -- maybe -- K-12), as opposed to the 400 or so my wofe had just in her class.
And, you know what? I had a great time. I'm really glad I went. We pre-partied a bit Friday night (necessary, of course, including some mean karaoke), spent some time with the 'rents Saturday, Saturday night got to see everyone get their drink on and helped out with the Sunday afternoon family day. There were some surprises, too. One of my best friends in high school who died a while back...well, his sister was there. I had no idea who she was at first. Quite shocking how good she looked and how much she'd changed from the little sister we grew up with and who used to run around and terrorize us. Others, too, looked good and seem to be aging quite nicely. Oh hell, we all are, really. And, for those who couldn't or didn't want to be there. I wish them well. Especially my buddy Ev. It would have been GREAT to see him. But, apparently, word is that he decided he would never live in the United States again because the laws are too, um, restrictive in some capacities, so I guess he's enjoying life in Thailand.
Those that organized this even say that they want to start doing them every 5 years. I could get behind that. And, you know that the people who showed up will show up in the future, barring any unforeseen circumstances, deaths, and such. Any excuse to drink in the north country is a good one.
-la
posted by Lex Armenia at 8:11 AM
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