I received something in the mail recently that doesn’t make any sense. It was an invitation to my 50th high school reunion, which is impossible because I’m only 27 years old.
I know, I know. Some of you insist that I must be much older, because I learned to drive a stick on my parents’ Ford Fairlane station wagon and remember fighting furiously with my brother over possession of the only bathroom in the house.
I’m pretty sure they don’t even build houses with one bathroom anymore, but I still insist that I’m only 27 years old. My hair is the flaming red color of an Irish lassie, I can use the most common youthful text abbreviations like OMW and WYD. I can even explain to you the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar (I know you don’t care, but it’s juicy.)
Admittedly, I have a 27-year-old son and 25-year-old daughter, but they’re both adopted, so that clears everything up, right?
I have never gone to any of my high school reunions, and it’s unlikely that I’ll end this streak any time soon. Even though I admit that a half-century is a staggering amount of time.
I was a fish out of water at the last high school I attended, and I had few friends, having moved there a year before graduation. Before that, I’d grown up too fast on an Air Force base in Puerto Rico, hitting “rum shacks” off base and spending most of my time making out under palm trees. In fact, I was a “fast” girl — the kind you didn’t want your kids to hang around with.
So, when we then moved to suburbia in northern Utah, the culture clash was just insurmountable. The kids my age were making their own root beer for fun and weren’t even allowed to date. It was unbearably wholesome. In my imagination today, I would have them listening to The Archies and Pat Boone, while I was definitely a Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin girl.
During those days, I mostly hung around with the druggies who loitered outside the swimming pool across from the school, not because I did drugs, but because they were the only people I felt weren’t judging my moral fiber.
I met my best friend — another Air Force brat like me — when we started skipping study hall together to smoke cigarettes in her car, Sadly, we lost touch, and I would probably go to the reunion just to see her. But she’s a year older than me, so she wouldn’t be there anyway.
The only time I actually considered going to my reunion was when I lived in Hollywood, worked in the entertainment industry and considered myself quite a hot, swinging chick. I probably really was 27 back then. I had a spectacularly handsome, charming artist friend named Casey who was a bit outrageous, and I confided to him that I was toying with the idea of going back to Utah for the reunion, but I felt all those kids looked down on me, so why would I bother?
Casey came up with a plan. He decided that we would go to the reunion together. I would wear my fanciest outfit and we’d arrive in a rented Mercedes. He would wear a white suit with a pearl-handled revolver and tell everyone he was my bodyguard. We spent several hours concocting the perfect bogus scenarios for the evening.
And then I realized I didn’t really care enough about any of those people to spend the money renting a Mercedes and flying out there. That’s the closest I ever came to going back to high school.
Nowadays, another issue is the flab around my middle. OK, OK, the flab around every part of me. In high school, I definitely was never hot, but I was reasonably attractive. I had long pretty brown hair I could sit on, and I wore a dress size that registered in single digits. (Something that will never happen again.)
Do I really need to attend an event full of people who already didn’t think highly of me, and show up as a plus-size version of my former self? I don’t think so.
I don’t need people looking around for the husband I never had, because I forgot to get married. Nor my kids, who would rather eat ground glass than be dragged to this event. Unfortunately, once they reach a certain age, you can’t force them to do anything anymore.
Plus, when I see pictures of other high school reunions that I didn’t attend, I think to myself, “Who are those people and why do they look so decrepit?”
It’s the same reason I never go see any rock ‘n’ hair bands from the 1970s, even though I love concerts. Seeing those former sex gods now hobbling around on stage with their mobility devices would just make me feel like a stegosaurus. (OK, having said that I now have to contradict myself. I am going to see the Rolling Stones at So-Fi in July. But of course Keith Richards is immortal.)
I’m curious about other people. Do you think most people go to their reunions? Honestly, if they held it on a nude beach in Fiji, I’d be more likely to attend. (OK, that’s a blatant lie. I couldn’t even get naked when my friend took me to a co-ed spa in San Francisco where everyone was nude.) But it sounds good, right?
I’ll let you know what I decide.
