High School Reunions

My 25-year high school reunion is this coming weekend. That's one of those things where if you live long enough its bound to come up, and its certainly good to be alive. Being reminded that you're squarely in middle age - and probably on the back end of that if you go by statistics - is a little less fun than the person that invented such reunions was probably shooting for.

Actually, I'm now kind of wondering if someone did shoot that person.

Sadly, I won't be able to attend the festivities, since the theatre is having the grand opening of its new building this weekend - and, I don't always know what my role is as president, but "Show Up To Grand Openings" seems like its probably in there - and then I'm leaving for Los Angeles right after. Plus, my hometown is certainly closer than it was during on the years on the East and West Coasts, but it's still a couple of hours drive.

All very legitimate excuses, by the way. It has nothing to do with avoidance. Nothing, I tell you.

It's not that I necessarily mind my age. OK, that's a lie and there are multiple posts just on this blog alone that would out me as a liar. How about, I don't mind my age when I don't think about it?

The other weekend they kept running specials about MTV turning 30...although it was on VH1, apparently because the suits at MTV didn't want to clue the current generation in about its age or have to answer questions about why "Video Killed the Radio Star."

Someone said to me, "Wow! MTV started 30 years ago! Can you believe it?" The answer was yes. Want to know why? Because I can remember where I was when I first saw the cable channel about 6 weeks after it debuted...and I was in junior high at the time.

Especially with the various emails about 25-year class reunions, and even with math not really being my favorite subject, I can do the math on that one.

(Quick shout out to my high school math teacher, the late Ms. Sours, who really could have done without me. Every year, she would walk into her classroom, see me sitting there, and then say, "Why? Why are you in my class again?" I'd usually wait for her to smile to let me know that she was just joshing, although she never did. "Because the colleges say that I have to," I'd reply. "Plus, I like the way your forehead creases when you see me.")

Much like the lions share of my life, I was fairly ambivalent about high school. I don't have a yearbook. I never had a class ring. I've got maybe six pictures from the time period. I'm sure I have the diploma around someplace, and I'm pretty sure that its in a box with my basketball stuff from back then. I'm sure that Amy probably knows where it is, if I ever really need to find it.

My biggest problem know is that my high school years happened to coincide with John Hughes' run of 80's teen movies. After 25 years, I sometimes have trouble remembering what was me and what was his movies.

"Remember that time that we snuck out of detention?"
"No, because that was 'The Breakfast Club."
"Remember when we were hanging out in the record store listening to Otis Redding?"
"That was 'Pretty In Pink."
"Rode a float in a Chicago parade?"
"Ferris Bueller."
"Sat around on Saturday nights with nothing to do?"
"Now, that was us."

Oddly, despite the general ambivalence, my best friends to this day are largely from my high school years. Part of that comes from having gone to school in a small town. But, still, the godparents to both Marty and Casey are high school friends of mine. The same ones. When it came time to pick godparents for Casey, we actually felt that anyone else was going to be a step down from who Marty had that we just made them godparents for both children.

My sons now know the same small town where I went to school, although to them its where Grandma and Grandpa live. Never mind that anyone that is an actual blood relation to me moved out of the area in 1985, its the family that I lived with in high school that my kids consider the real one.

Of course, it was just this year that my kids finally noticed that everyone in my hometown, including family, still calls me by my high school nickname of Slim. Really though, that just means they're slow on the uptake or they just don't care. I mean, it took them till grade school to notice that every time they went to their grandparents house people started calling their dad a completely different name. The saving grace is that community college will be significantly cheaper.

It's really only a core group of people that I kept in any sort of touch with, five or six people...and then Facebook happened. Thanks to the social media giant, not only do you get to suddenly have contact with people that you haven't spoken to in 25 years, you get to see what they look like now. That's got to help more than the "Hello, My Name is" stick-ons ever could.

I'm sure that my former classmates will have fun with each other while I'm off doing my meet-and-greet with the theatre patrons. One of my friends who's attending proudly declared that its close enough to his house that he doesn't need a designated driver because he can just walk home. That's the kind of spirit that you still find at the 25-year reunion that probably gets wiped out by the 50-year one.

Maybe, just maybe, someone will reminisce about that time that we all paid a dollar to that one geek just to look at a pair of panties.

(Sixteen Candles)