Saturday, November 29, 2008

The Death of the High School Reunion

Last night I accompanied my wife to her 10 year high school reunion. It was the right thing to do. Now, keep in mind that I deliberately skipped my own reunion last year because I just don't have the taste for that sort of an event...awkward conversation, poor quality buffet type food, etc. But being the good husband that I try to be, I sucked it up and took one for the team.

It was exactly as I had imagined it. I mostly stood/sat in near silence as nearly all of the conversation focused around the good old days I was not a part of, not to mention it was extremely loud from the music (surprisingly not all pulled from this graduating class's high school years) so it was difficult to follow conversation most of the time. I swear I was not trying to be a stick in the mud, but I just really had nothing to say. No one asked me what I did, or anything else really, even when I would engage them and ask them about what they were into. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? I scratch your back if you scratch mine?

The upside was that they ended up being extremely liberal with the drink tickets as they must not have had as many people show up as what they were expecting, so we each got four tickets...yowza. Had they stocked any type of beer that I was interested in I may have been in trouble. Had a couple Sam Adams and a s-t-r-o-n-g gin & tonic and that was all I cared for.

Ended up at a brewpub where a friend of ours was playing (played a brilliant acoustic guitar version of Blackstreet's "No Diggity"), the Waldorff in Hastings...had a not-to-good porter and a decent stout, and that would have all perfectly redeemed the evening if I could have gotten a bite to eat but the kitchen had already closed...oh well.

Last thought: In a world of Facebook, My Space, Linked In, etc., what's the point of high school reunions?

2 comments:

Sam said...

Your final question nails it, especially for those of us who have little desire to engage in inane, contrived conversations. We have all the information we want or need from peoples' Facebook pages. If I want to know what you have been doing the last few years, where you work, or general information about your kids, I will just look up your info page.

I missed my 10 year and I assume I will not make any subsequent reunions unless there is a special drawing card, the content of which is unknown at this time.

Austin Long said...

i'm sorry you got dragged to your wife's reunion.

erin had one last weekend and i didn't go, specifically for the reasons you mentioned. so i sent her off and enjoyed a weekend to the my favorite person in the world--me. and i did nothing and it was everything i hoped it could be.

i don't plan on going to any reunions. i have a whole rant about it but will sum it by saying that of the 414 people i graduated with, i don't give a rat's ass about 400 of them.

in the current age, this leads into a whole social networking spiel, but i'll save that.

but a g and t sounds mighty, mighty good to me.