oh yay! oh crap!
So people are starting to send me messages about my ten-year high school reunion, coming up this summer sometime. I figure I’ll begin preparing right away by examining every single area of my life for the ways in which I do not measure up to the person I’d planned to be by now. It’s never too early to start with that bullshit, is it?
My ten year HS reunion is in 2011. I’m already thinking about it. It’s never too early.
You’re going about it all wrong; your task is to make up a better story than anybody elses. Besides those who are now doctors, nobody else is going to feel they’ve got it together but you – YOU! – you toured Tibet, wound through the yellow river of China. You tried your hand at puppeteering ’cause you’ve never really healed after Jim Henson’s death but lately you found development work at a college much more satisfying. That is, you’re just doing that before you leave to do that assistant work for the documentary on location in Albania, which you’re really excited about. In fact, you weren’t even sure you were going to be able make the reunion ’cause you just weren’t sure you’d be in the country.
yes yes.
Lorie, I strongly recommend you go. (I blogged about my 20 year reunion a couple of years back; I had a lot of trepidation but was glad I went.)
You’ll feel hotter, smarter, and more successful than you can imagine when you see your classmates. Trust me.
Other than them being married and having 3 kids already, I doubt they’re as successful professionaly as you are. They probably all still hang out at “The Beef” .. and also, there are certain possibly outed people you may want to run into… if ya know what i mean.
You could always tell people you invented Post-Its….
Here’s what will happen (she says, having just gone to her 10-year in November). You’ll go (I hope). You’ll head straight for the bar, even though it’s cash and it’s $4 for a shitty shitty vodka and sprite ($5, with tip, which is such a rip). Within 10 minutes you will have consumed three of these, and you’ll feel comfortable enough to sit down at a table of girls you were friends with freshman year, whose faces are stricken with panic as they count the number of chairs, because they told Jessi they’d save her and her husband a seat, so how do they tell you you’re NOT INVITED? Then you’ll see the cool girls come in, the ones who smoked in the bathroom and had sex in high school (though you did none of these things). You were friends with one of them, and she will shout your name across the room, and the vodka will start feeling better, and you hug her and exchange shy smiles with the rest of her crowd, and then the valedictorian/ cheerleader/ got-pregnant-May-of-senior-year girl walks in, demands to know where the bar is, because she must drink, NOW. Even though you were not friends with most of these people, and in fact, were actively intimidated by most of them, they will be your new best friends as you eat wedding food and sit at your life raft of a table, seemingly the only ones in the room HORRIFIED that your class president is leading the 1996 graduating class of a PUBLIC SCHOOL in a PRAYER. You will ask each other where all the black kids are, and whether or not you should tell people you invented Post-Its. You’ll all decide to tell people you invented the iPod, since Post-Its were around when you were in school. You’ll be pretty drunk at that point, so you’ll pick up Emily’s (the most intimidating of them all) cell phone and take pictures of yourself flipping it off. She’ll message you on myspace about it later. And, $80 poorer ($45 ticket, $35 in booze), feet aching from the cute shoes you wore, you’ll be glad you went. Because now, thanks to the Intarwebs, myspace, and email, you have some new old friends. Long enough?
I was great guns about going to my 10-year runion. Then I didn’t go. Why? I don’t know. I bought the ticket. I just stayed home. It didn’t bother me. I’ve never trusted since anyone who says “Go! Go! Go!” It doesn’t matter. I’m certain of that. (I know plenty of folks from high school and we’ve never discussed the 10-year reunion. It was much too local.) Now, 20 or 30 years, that might be fun. But 10 years is too close. Everyone is under unmanagable debt; no one has a decent perspective on kids; no one has kickass property; the shit anyone brags about is stupid (money, weight, travel, etc.). The music isn’t tremendously different. Etc. All you can find out is how many “cool” people have stopped thinking. And if that draws you, you probaby haven’t advanced very far in the world.
Go if you want to hang out with kids.
Do NOT go if you have a single competitive urge because both its satisfication and defeat will, ulitmately, be deflating.
– Master Splinter
Mine’s coming up in April. It’ll be in Vegas, because Okinawa’s too far for everybody.
My boyfriend and I are going, because some of these people were really great friends of mine that I haven’t been able to see in a very long time for one reason or another. Apparently graduating from a DoDDS school overseas results in being part of a class that is literally scattered across the globe; and it’s not often (if at all) that people get to return and visit for old time’s sake, or meet up with old classmates to catch up/reminisce…So I guess I’m looking forward to mine, although I must admit I’m a bit nervous. I’m also looking forward to it because my best friend is driving over from LA and my boyfriend’s never been to Vegas. Should be lots of drunken stupid fun.
I don’t get the Post-It thing. Is that from a movie I haven’t seen, or is everyone here just riffing on the same joke and I’m stupid? Or both?
The Post-It thing is from Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. They decide to tell everyone at their reunion that they invented Post-Its to cover up the fact that their jobs suck.