Ebjournal Revisited.

Friday night: The Football Game

(second side note: As a reminder, I’m writing this for me, as a way to keep a record of what happened. It will probably be very boring for you, but it’s part of the continual catharsis of me.)

As Joe and I arrived at the game with his wife in tow, the first representative of the class of ‘96 was a gentleman who I thought was destined for the clock-tower-sniper route of fame. He’s still weird as hell, but he’s married and now has four kids. FOUR kids. I’m not sure he should have been allowed to spawn, but whatever. We went up to the alumni section to find no one there. Slowly people started to trickle in, and for the most part ignored us. I spoke with a guy I went to preschool with, but the rest of them (the decidely “jock” crowd, and people I didn’t really speak with back in the day) obviously had hung out with each other, and possibly had not even get past the golden years of high school. Eventually I ran into one of my best friends from high school, whom I hadn’t spoken with since his father died in ‘98. Turns out he has a wonderful 5 1/2 year old daughter, and is living within five miles of my house. He was pretty much the same, and was still hanging out with two guys from high school. At this point I was starting to feel like I was the only one that hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from high school because everyone seemed to know something about other people. Joe, Meg, and I left after the half-time show (the band looks better, but they’re smaller than they used to be) and had a delicious post-game meal at Red Robin. During dinner, Joe caught me up on the bando updates; who was doing what, and who I could expect to see in the near future. Again, he seemed to know a lot about what was going on. This left me trying to justify why I hadn’t kept in contact. Was it because I was in Champaign for 8 out of the ten years? Was it because I am a terrible person? Did anyone even notice I wasn’t around? Should I even care? I have good friends surrounding me now, to the point where I did not even know that I was possibly missing out on the people of my past. (And we ALL know how much I hate missing stuff) So Friday night made me even more confused than I really wanted to be.

Saturday night: The Reunion
Ever the Type-A, TLEMK and I managed to make it to the bar ten minutes before the reunion even started. Again, this made it so there was nobody there that I either knew or wanted to engage in a conversation.

(Side note #3:TLEMK was a godsend all night and she looked stunning.For this I owe her big time.)

Frantically texting Joe to hurry up, V and I got our open bar drinks quickly, and sat around looking at people. (The open bar was pretty crappy as well… I know we could have done better.) When Joe arrived, we grabbed a booth in the corner, and chatted for a while. I talked to a few random people and continued to drink. Because I’m fidgety, I went to make a circuit of the room and within 30 seconds of leaving my seat I found a bando friend and her husband, who, as it turns out, has been in grad school with V all summer. So now TLEMK has two people that she can talk to throughout the evening, without having to face a lot of the pressure to make small talk with inebriated strangers who she’ll most likely never see again. For both of us, it was the best of both worlds. People who wanted to meet V were led back to the table; everyone else I just chatted with for a few minutes and moved on. I went back to check in on TLEMK constantly, making sure that she was okay too. I probably spoke with close to 40 people that evening and all of them were a fantastic combination of familiar and unfamiliar. I like to claim my memory is great, but there were a lot of people I hadn’t thought about in ten years, and many of my high school memories have disappeared. (They’ve been replaced with things like the main characters’ names in High School Musical and the features of Tickle-Me-Elmo-Xtreme. I also blame alcohol.)

Saturday night observations:

1) This fairly conservative group of kids definitely have let their hair down in the last ten years. Our school was never considered a party school, especially compared to the stories I hear from my college friends.

2) I’m so happy I’m not as bald as many of the men in my class. I always think I wouldn’t care if I started going bald but then I realize that I assume this would happen in my thirties or early forties. Not when I’m 25. Yes, it sounds vain. Oh well. TLEMK asked me if we looked that old, and I told her that I didn’t think so. There were definitely some signs that some of the more popular crowd had been partying a little too hard in the past few years.

3)I got my speech about who I was, what I’d been doing, and my standard questions to ask down pat within the first four people I encountered.

4) Our class had some really smart people in it. I in no way feel like a failure in my chosen profession, but when I hear how people are out there, it’s really amazing. We have an Oscar-nominated director, a person who writes articles for The Wall Street Journal, a manager of project managers for Caterpillar, at least two doctors (one working at the Mayo Clinic, another a ophthamologist), engineers, and consultants up the wazoo. That was just the women that I spoke to in two hours. Who knows what I missed? There were also a lot of teachers in the group– I spoke with at least ten people that were somehow involved in education. Amazing.
5) MANY, MANY more people were married than I thought they would be. Then again, they might have been thinking the same things about me. It was so fascinating to hear about how peoples’ lives have developed.

6) Along with numbers four and five, it turns out that a lot of our class were late bloomers. It also seemed to me that everyone in high school (at least in my social class of nerdy/prep/not-popular group) must have dealt with a lot of the same baggage. If I had known that then, maybe I wouldn’t have insulated myself so much.

Overall, it was a good thing that I went. I don’t know what will come of it. I would like to think that the phone numbers and email addresses I got will make a difference, and that I’ll reconnect with people, but the truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll wait for another ten years, or if my life is at a point where I want to explore making connections with people that saw a different side of me than my current friends.

I know Frank the Tank is going to his reunion this weekend, but since EVERYONE knows Frank, I’m sure his experience will be great. I’m not sure what my experience was yet, but thanks for listening, Internet. What do you think? Are you planning on going to your reunion/did you go to your reunion? How did you feel about it?

The next post will return to light-hearted commentary on the potential of this year’s batch of awesome second graders.