Earlier this year, the high school I graduated from had a reunion. I’m not going to tell you how long it’s been since I graduated high school, but the ten year reunion was in 2000. I didn’t go to my ten year reunion. I *wanted* to; I was pregnant with The Captain at the time, and the plan was that TUO and I would go to my reunion as ‘life partners’, and explain that we’d hung around outside Taylor Field with a turkey baster and a naughty magazine in order to get donated sperm.
TUO couldn’t make it that weekend, though, so I went up to the Gateway to the North and hung out at my Mum’s house and my friend Melba Toast was in town for the reunion so she came to visit. I could have gone, I guess. But in truth, the only people I hung out with in high school that I’d really wanted to …reunite with, I’d already kept in touch with. There are an awful lot of prepositions in that sentence. Sorry about that.
So this time around, I hemmed. I even hawed a bit. I wasn’t sure if I cared enough about the entire circus to make a huge effort. As it turned out, I wasn’t able to go anyway. Problem solved. And, to accommodate me, I went anyway.
I saw a couple of the teachers I knew; I’d never had them in class, but they were friends of my parents. Quite good friends of my parents. One of them asked how things were going, and then offered to buy me a drink. I must say, I have never been more relieved to accept a drink from someone. We chatted for a time (we were in the staff room, actually, in which I have spent more time than any of the Interns who came to the school) and then they threw me to the wolves.
By which I mean they shuffled me out into the ‘cafetorium’ (yes, it more or less was a vomitorium) to “enjoy” the dance.
I did not enjoy the dance.
I never enjoyed the dances. A good 1/3 of the students took every dance opportunity to get a liquored up as possible; something I never really understood. I tried it once, went to a dance three sheets to the wind. The teachers wouldn’t even let one of my friends in, so he went and passed out in the back of our other friend’s van, and I went in to the dance and stared at pretty lights while the Video Dee Jay played crappy music. Rick Astley and Whitney Houston. Huzzah.
In fact, that must have been a fate worse than the seven levels of hell – being a video dee jay in the late eighties. In that northern town. I’m surprised there weren’t more self-inflicted fatal beatings among video dee jays.
Anyhow, the organisers of the reunion had booked a video dee jay for the dance portion of the reunion, which was after the hot dog/hamburger dinner and the family hour. The only real difference was that it was legal to sell booze at this event. I saw a couple of people I haven’t seen since the day I put my mortarboard in the bottom of my closet. They were much the same, only more tired, and in one case, trying to relive his youth.
I don’t really understand the fascination with high school reunions. Maybe 40 year high school reunions (which is probably what I said about the 10th; that maybe the 20th would be more important), or 50 year ones. I just…it seems to me to be the kind of thing where you try to prove yourself, your worth and your accomplishments, all over again. So I wouldn’t say it was a *good* dream. But it wasn’t a *terrible* dream either.
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.