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July 2003
It's summertime and you know what that
means. Vacations, barbecues, conventions of every ilk and
persuasion. And the dreaded high school reunion. I bumpbed
into a former classmate at the college Taco Bell this past year.
"You're coming to the reunion, right?" she asked eagerly. She was
decked out in surgical scrubs, and I was certain that her being at
college was a fluke. She must've graduated years before, while I was in
my last year of my major. I grinned politely, thinking about why I
wore my Powerpuff Girls babydoll tee that day and muttered something
like "Maybe." Former Classmate grinned even more eagerly and insisted
that I come. "It'll be fun." This coming from someone who I remember
loved listening to Skid Row as a teen, teased up her hair with
dangerous amounts of hairspray and gel, and thought that Sebastian Bach
was "hot." Erm...reunions? Fun? I'm sorry but I have a
Second Opinion
There is nothing worse that attending a high school reunion. I could
come up with a hundred different things I'd rather be doing than
speaking with high school classmates, like root canal or having red-hot
pokers shoved into my eye sockets. I will be the first to admit that I
am a loser. I had a spectacular string of majors I tried out, and
after failing miserably with every subject related to science, I
decided to enter the world of the English major as a last resort.
Heck, I liked writing, and it seemed to be the only damn thing I was
good at. Lucky thing, too. I had a wonderful run in my English
classes, and within my major, I managed a 3.5 GPA. Unfortunately, my
string of abysmal grades in the sciences brought down my average to
2.65. But, hey, I did better in college than our President, right?
And I sure as heck have a better grasp of the English language than he
seems to.
I don't think I'd enjoy attending my 10 year high school reunion. I
really don't have any real reasons for going. I'm not ravenously
curious to find out what happened to so-and-so and if he really married
her like he said he was gonna do. My high school memories are an
incomplete blur of homework, theater, and socializing. Not so much the
socializing. Unpopular? Nerdy? Geeky? Oh, yeah, that was me. And
it still is to a certain extent.
I'm really unsure about the class of 1993. Those Alumni Newsletters
they manage to send me every three months try to keep tabs on us,
inform us what we're doing, and so forth. Unfortunately, I've never
really seen much on my fellow classmates. There were over 100 of us,
and yet only one or two make it into the newsletter every time. Was
there something about us that makes us reluctant to share what we've
accomplished? Are we all ashamed of what we didn't accomplish?
Crushed by reality? I have no idea. But I do know one thing. This
weekend, instead of mingling with people in a cramped hotel ballroom,
squinting desperately at nametags in an attempt to match memories to
faces, I'll probably be out on a beach somewhere watching the waves.
Now who's with me?
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