I recently received something in the mail that makes no 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 a furious battle with my brother over ownership 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. My hair is the flamboyant red color of an Irish girl, I can use the most common youth abbreviations like OMW and JMJ. I can even explain the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar to you (I know you don’t care, but it’s juicy.)
Granted, I have a 27-year-old son and a 25-year-old daughter, but they’re both adopted, so that clears things up, right?
I never went to any of my high school reunions and I’m unlikely to end that streak anytime soon. Although I admit that half a century is a staggering amount of time.
I was a fish out of water at the last high school I attended and had few friends because I had moved there a year before graduation. Before that, I had grown up too fast on an Air Force base in Puerto Rico, frequenting off-base “rum shacks” 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 hanging out with.
So when we moved to a suburb in northern Utah, the culture shock was simply insurmountable. Kids my age made their own root beer for fun and weren’t even allowed to hang out with them. It was unbearably healthy. 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.
At that time, I mostly hung out with the drug addicts who hung out in front of the pool in front of the school, not because I was on drugs, but because they were the only people who, in my opinion, didn’t judge 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. Unfortunately, we lost contact 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 here anyway.
The only time I actually considered going to my reunion was when I was living in Hollywood, working in the entertainment industry, and considered myself a pretty hot, swinging girl. I was probably 27 at the time. I had an incredibly handsome and charming artist friend named Casey who was a little scandalous, and I confided to him that I was toying with the idea of going back to Utah for the reunion, but I felt like all these kids were me. looked down on them, so why should 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 would arrive in a rental Mercedes. He wore a white suit with a pearl-handled revolver and told everyone he was my bodyguard. We spent several hours concocting the perfect fake scenarios for the evening.
And then I realized I didn’t care enough about these people to spend money renting a Mercedes and flying. It was the closest I got to going back to high school.
Nowadays, another problem is the fat around my waist. OK, OK, fat around every part of me. In high school, I was certainly never sexy, but I was reasonably attractive. I had long brown hair that I could sit on and I wore a single-digit dress size. (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 present myself as a plus-sized version of my old self? I do not think so.
I don’t need people looking for the husband I never had because I forgot to get married. Nor my children, who would rather eat crushed glass than be dragged into this event. Unfortunately, once they reach a certain age, you can’t force them to do anything.
Plus, when I see pictures of other high school reunions that I didn’t attend, I think, “Who are these people and why do they look so decrepit?”
It’s the same reason I never go see 1970s rock’n’hair bands, even though I love the concerts. Watching these ancient sex gods hobble around on stage with their mobility devices would make me feel like a Stegosaurus. (OK, that said, I must now contradict myself. I’m going to see the Rolling Stones at So-Fi in July. But of course, Keith Richards is immortal.)
I’m curious about the others. Do you think most people go to their meetings? Honestly, if they held it at a nudist 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 naked.) But it sounds good, right?
I’ll let you know what I decide.
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