My 20-year High School Reunion

[Fierce Critter]

So, it was this past weekend.

As I mentioned in another thread, the people organizing the reunion were doing a crap job of contacting people. I think they only way they were finding people is by whomever registered with Classmates.com.

At one point, I relized they couldn't contact about 60% of the graduating class.

So I got on Zabasearch.com and spent about 6 hours one night trying to find more. By the time I was done, they had contact information for about 75% of the class at least. And quite a few of those people showed up at the reunion dinner/dance last night.

Friday night's festivities involved a football game at the school, and alumni were invited to attend for the game, and then check out the school afterwards. Jon and I went to the game, which was probably the 2nd game I've been to in my entire life. Neither he nor I are football fans, but we went for the sake of the reunion.

In high school, I was a loner. I was kind shy & nerdy my first couple years there. Then, at the end of my junior year, I went New Wave/Cyndi Lauper, and suddenly lots of people knew my name. Still, I didn't hang out with very many people.

I graduated 14th in my class, but I didn't hang out with the brains. I had crushes on some of the jocks, but was too fat to be asked out by any of them. I hung out at the smoking doors with the burnouts. I rubbed elbows with other "outcasts" but all of us were anti-social, so we didn't even hang out together. I wasn't a bully to nerds, but I wasn't friends with any either. Well, not many of them.

So, once I graduated, I lost track of everyone. I ran into a few people after school, but not many.

And the football game was like history repeating itself. Lots of people knew my name. But none of them bothered to converse with me. Jon was amused to see that it was just as it was when I went to school - me sitting and observing, but not being welcomed to actually be involved in the cliques that re-formed after 20 years.

We left the game before the 4th quarter, and went over to the school by ourselves. They had a formal dress sale going on in the library, and I took Jon in there. I was walking him around in there, telling him about how I didn't like going to the lunchroom, so I used to go there during lunch, and the librarian would let me and a couple other people stay in the staff's rooms in the back. And the librarian was there, and took us back there, and told us she still lets students who don't like going to the lunchroom go in there. Nothing ever changes.

We took a walk around the school, I got a little confused over where my locker had been, but I think I got it. It's the same school, but they painted all the walls. Jon held my hand and kissed me in the hall, so I can now say that I, for the first time, held a boy's hand and kissed him at my high school.

Last night, the dinner/dance, was very interesting. We showed up a bit late. I was dressed "City Club Formal" in my velvet skirt, velvet bell-sleeve top, my corset, and my high-heel boots and fishnets. Had my hair done in loose waves by the hairstylist next door, so I was looking hot, if I do say so myself. We walked in, and I immediately felt self-conscious. Not because of how I looked, but because everybody looked so fucking different. So damned old.

Crows feet on all the women. Most of the guys got fat or bald. And I wasn't seeing anyone that I actually knew that well. So Jon and I immediately got in the food line, and I scanned the crowd for a familiar face to eventually sit down with.

Luckily, I spotted the one person I've talked to since graduating. And we were happy to see each other. Both of us were there because we hoped "that one other person" would be there to sit with, so we were relieved to find each other.

I had a couple drinks, and started relaxing a bit more. And finally, some conversation started happening. I reconnected with some people who might not have actually been friends, but who were closer than anyone else. Amazing how some of these people looked. And the lives they're living all the moreso.

It was remembered how I was the "different" one with my punk mullet, pink hair & wild Cyndi Lauper outfits, and how the outfit I had on last night reflected that I was still "different". But an amazing number of people observed that I had been shy. I found that interesting. I never thought I was shy, I just always thought I wasn't real welcome in certain social circles in school.

Some of the most interesting people I conversed with are doing very interesting things with their lives. One designs custom motorcycles. Another makes swords, and sells at the Ren Fest in Holly. Another is fluent in sign language and works with developmentally challenged adults & children. Another, whom kept a modeling career a secret until the very last days of school, quit modeling and went back to school and hooked up with a college professor. I found out that the "super quiet, but nice-seeming girl" was that way because all through school, her mother had been terribly ill, so she had a lot on her mind. We were comparing notes about how both of us were seen as shy, and how we should have tried to break through to each other "back then".

There were some negatives. Like the super-popular chick who quit school early to dance for theme parks & the circus busting into a conversation I was having with a guy as if I wasn't even standing there, with her gaggle of hangers-on backing her up.

Gads, how people don't change.

Overall though, it was really a positive experience. I swapped contact information with a handful of people and I'm truly curious to see if any of us follow-up on it.

Amazing and aggravating to learn that they had not only a 5 year reunion, which I knew about but didn't attend, but also a 10 and a 15 year reunion as well - none of which I was contacted about. I really wonder how in hell they tried to find people, 'cause it's obvious they did a really horrible job of it over the years. My parents still live in the same home I lived in when going to school, and with the exception of living in NC for a few years which was between reunions, I have never lived outside of the downriver area.

Since I was chief editor of the school newspaper for a semester or two, I offered to be the go-to person for pictures & anecdotes/memories of people so I can put together a reunion-edition of the newspaper to make available as a sort of remembrance. Probably buck printing issues by just making it a web-zine style thing.

I do hope to attend more reunions in the future. Hopefully, if I offer to help, we might have a better turnout. Awful lot of people didn't make it that I would have liked to have seen.

There was a picnic today as a sort of capper, but I didn't attend. I felt sick after drinking yesterday, as I haven't been drinking for many months, and my tolerance was very low. I actually wasn't very interested in a 3rd activity. Especially since I look a hell of a lot hotter in a leather corset than I do in picnic wear.

[Head Wreck]

that woman busting in on a conversation would have had a dressing down if that were me.

[Fierce Critter]

that woman busting in on a conversation would have had a dressing down if that were me.

Oh, I found it amusing. So very typical.

But if I could go back to high school the person I am now, I think I'd be seen more as, "That smart punk chick who tells it like it is and doesn't give a shit about the bullshit jerkoffs try to throw at her".

I really do wish I'd been this confident back then. A bitch busting into my conversation like that would have made me feel small and insignificant in school. Now, it amuses me to see how some people never grow up.

Oh - another observation. I was one of a very, very few people who did not have kids after school. The vastor majority of the women had kids. But also interestingly, those of us who considered ourselves "outcasts" of some kind came back childless, but happy, and a thousand times more confident than we ever were in school.

I found that interesting.

[Steven]

I need to write a sequel to the breakfast club and call it the supper club.

centered around their 25 year reuinion.

I am John Bender of course.

strolling back down memory lane can be both disturbing and revelatory.

some of us actually change. I did. alot.

whats amazing to me is how many people don't change, or - they simply change styles but are still stuck in the same life patterns....kind of makes you think about our values and goals and self (or lack of) esteem....how deeply rooted those things allready are by our teenyears.

I remember once at a reunion somebody asking my wife what I did for a living. Laura told her I was an electrician. "Oh...is he BIG TIME? Cause my husband is BIG TIME - with his own shop and trucks..."

sorry babe.

I was not big time.

never did become big time.

I am still not big time.

I'm also not an asshole anymore.

And I dont do drugs

and I wont steal your lady

and I'm not angry

and I actually listen to people now.

and my cat Lilly loves me. Alot.

so that's pretty good. I could trade all of that in for a new truck though....

[BrassFusion]

I remember once at a reunion somebody asking my wife what I did for a living. Laura told her I was an electrician. "Oh...is he BIG TIME? Cause my husband is BIG TIME - with his own shop and trucks..."

Damn. I hope I never have to vicariously brag through a husband. How pathetic.

Yeah, if I were you, I wouldn't worry about "competing" with people like that.

[Msterbeau]

Yeah, if I were you, I wouldn't worry about "competing" with people like that.

Yeah. The affection of a cat is much more important.

[BrassFusion]

Yeah. The affection of a cat is much more important.

All you cat people just keep telling yourselves that, lol...

[Msterbeau]

All you cat people just keep telling yourselves that, lol...

we don't have to tell ourselves a thing. That cat's purring does it for us.

[Fierce Critter]

we don't have to tell ourselves a thing. That cat's purring does it for us.

And the buttering (kneading) and the rubbing, and the insistence on - no less than 4-8 of them - sleeping with us every night.

<--- holds ears and says LA LA LA LA LA while the cynics around her yammer on about body heat, scent marking, etc.

[Fierce Critter]

Oh, yeah, and