With trepidation, excitement and a dash of indifference, two-hundred people walk into a room where they will be with two-hundred people they have not seen in a decade. At a point in their lives where people have discovered their self-confidence and self-worth, there is a nagging suspicion in all of them, that maybe they are still…. insecure.
Welcome to My High School Reunion.
Allow me to begin by saying that I actually did not have an awful time in high school. Give or take the teenage growing pains where you cry all the time and your life is almost always over for everything, high school was fair to me by most standards.
Rejoining this group of people after not seeing them for ten years is another experience in itself. After all, you’re basing current adult conversations on a deranged part of your life. And even though we’ve all grown up here, you can’t help but think, “I wonder if she’s still pissed that I called her a Sasquatch freshman year.”
8 Things I have learned:
1.) Facebook has single-handedly ruined high school reunions.
a. Knowing what people do before seeing them after ten years, makes conversations that much harder. “So, I see you’re working in textiles and you’re pissed about your broken iPhone… so how are things?”
b. Essentially, we all know what we’re up to in life. So much so that once we find out too much, we elect to hide them from our news feed.
2.) Always have a formula and exit strategy for conversations.* Please see below:
a. Where do you live?
b. What are you up to now-a-days?
c. Do you remember when (insert significant memory here) ?
d. I’m going to grab another drink.
*Only to be used on conversations where it is most needed. (the person you never really talked to in hs, the wife of classmate who is lonely and weird)
3.) People don’t really change.
a. The socially awkward are still socially awkward
b. The bitchy chics are still bitchy
c. You still like to randomly break out into songs that you learned for a choir concert in 10th grade and expect your classmates to echo your sentiments, “Light one candle for the Maccabee Children.. come on everyone!”
4.) Someone will inevitably sneak a peek at your name tag before exclaiming their general question, mistaken for a salutation, “OMG, How ARE you!!??” As if you were best friends…
5.) You’ll end up hanging out with the people you have stayed friends with over the years.
6.) You’ll be sad you just spent all that money to hang out with the friends you have stayed friends with over the years when you could’ve chilled at one of their houses, played a quick game of catch phrase and discussed the benefit of granicrete counter tops.
7.) The bitchy girls who get so wasted that they literally fall to the floor while dancing in their 4 inch heels, makes paying the cover to get in, worth every penny. (There comes a moment of pride when you realize you have an amazing tolerance for alcohol before you become self-aware that that’s not something you want to brag about.)
8.) You contemplate if you’ll do this again in another 10 years. My guess will be no. Especially if Facebook isn’t there as your Cliff Notes on the personal lives of your former classmates. (sneak a name-tag-peek) OMG How ARE you!!??
