I hope your Thanksgiving holidays were nice. Mine was quite cheerful and entertaining, except for the fact that I’m not drinking until after the marathon so I missed out on the rousing games of Kings, Asshole, Flip Cup and Beer Pong that my roommates enjoyed until the wee hours of the morning. We had a delicious pot-luck dinner where about fifteen people provided way too much food. Also my sister is in town so she’s been making the most of Los Angeles for the past few days.
Meanwhile, across the country, tonight would be my 10-year high school reunion were I to attend it. Quite frankly the days and weeks leading up to this event have entertained and infuriated me in equal measure. From the moment I was invited to the official Facebook group for the 2001 Class Reunion I’ve been watching and commenting (to myself, mostly) about how ridiculous the planning an execution of the reunion has been. On top of that I’ve been scratching my head as I try to recall who the fuck the people are who keep posting comments like, “Can’t wait to see (insert another name I don’t recognize)!” Countless drunken nights have concluded with me staring at my laptop monitor trying to decide if I should hit the “post” button and share my “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!?”s with the other 300+ people in my graduating class.
It’s not like I had a rough time in high school. I might not have liked being there but I’d say if all of my classmates didn’t like me they at least knew who I was. I could sit with jocks in study hall and bully the kid who didn’t speak English too well. I had a large group of friends at my lunch table. I could meet the kid who got a 1600 on his SATs at a diner late on a Saturday night. So before I go further, don’t assume I’m just a bitter asshole. I might be an asshole but high school didn’t scar me (although if you ask my old principal, Mr. Walker, he MIGHT recall a story about burn scars on my testicles, but that’s another story for another day).
Having just returned to Los Angeles a 3-week trip to New York and India, geography and timing will prevent me from attending my high school reunion. But even if I was in New Jersey right now, I wouldn’t be at the reunion. Sure, I had ridiculous, illegitimate excuses for not walking to walk at my high school or college graduations. But I can think of at least ten reasonable explanations for why I’m not back East drinking and reuning (yes, that’s a word!) with my old school chums.
The Top Ten Reasons I’m Not At My 10-Year High School Reunion
10. “So What Do You Do?” – Do you really think I — a man with zero social mores and less-than-zero respect for people who engage in meaningless chit-chat — could endure fifty conversations with people about what I’m doing with my life? The short answer is, “Fuck you.” Of course I can’t do that. I’d be more likely to tell fifty different stories about what I’m doing right now, and then someone would compare notes with someone else and by the end of the night I’d be a lying asshole. It’s happened before. Some time after college I bumped into a kid I knew in high school and he said he’d heard a rumor that I was a songwriter who toured the country. I told him that was absolutely right, and made up a story about getting arrested in Missoula, Montana. I don’t know why I did it. It just seemed like the right thing to do. And that was one guy, on a random night at a random diner in my hometown. Do you think I’d really turn down the opportunity to do shit like that dozens of times to people I don’t care about!?
09. Dont Want To See My Exes – It’s always awkward when you break up with a girl you hooked-up with in high school. Like the girl who told everyone I stalked her, or the one who tried to tell everyone she broke up with me because she heard I was going to break up with her first, or the girl who switched into my US History II class and then I told everyone she was stalking me….It’s never pleasant. I’m sure they’re all fat and old-looking now. One or two has probably shit out a kid. I don’t need any closure, I don’t need any awkward, stilted conversations. I don’t want to see any of them.
08. They Hired A D.J. – Who the fuck hires a DJ? What is this, a Bar Mitzvah? Are we going to listen to Dookie or “Who Let The Dogs Out?” Green Day sucks. Fuck Bar Mitzvah dances.
07. They’re Not Ready For Me – Some of you may know me, and may know how I act in person. If you do, you’re pretty well aware that I have no filter, and I say everything I think, and it turns a lot of people off (it also makes some people laugh!). I was not like this in high school. If I showed up and started talking shit about other people at the party, or regaling people with stories that are going to sicken them or make me look bad, I’m pretty sure no one would want me there. They’re not ready for me. I just had a conversation with my roommates about spanking a girl’s vagina with my cock. A lot of people are turned off by that kind of conversation, but for me it’s typical bar/hang-out talk. If I tried that at my ten year high school reunion I’d be treated like a leper for the remainder of the night. I don’t want to be a leper!
06. I Can Drink And Make An Ass Out Of Myself Just Fine Over Here – Well, not for the next week, until the marathon is over. But most people think high school reunions are about getting drunk with people you haven’t seen in ten years. I don’t need to be around people I haven’t seen in a decade to drink myself blackout. And even if I did get blackout drunk, those aren’t the people I’d want to be around. Maybe two or three of them; maybe people from my close circle of friends. Hell, even my closest friends from high school probably wouldn’t like me when I’m wasted as a 28 year old, walking up to girls who are clearly holding hands with their boyfriends and telling them “Your boyfriend looks like he has a tiny cock. Let me put a little baby in your tum tum.”
05. “You look fat. Have you had babies?” – It’s got to be depressing when you look at girls you had a crush on in high school and see that they’ve aged terribly. Why would I fly to New Jersey and be disappointed to see how ugly all those girls are when I can walk down the street here in LA and see a number of beautiful women.
04. The Close Circle Is Far Away – The only reason I would go a high school reunion would be if my close circle of friends were also planning on attending. But they’re not. Most of ’em have moved away from home, and they’re even further away from high school mentally or emotionally than they are physically. That’s why they’re my close cirlce — my wolf pack. We think alike. None of us would be caught dead there. Which leads me to my next point.
03. I Took An Oath – When I was a senior in high school I had a conversation with one of my best friends that ended with us swearing we would never step foot in our high school or go to any event having to do with our high school until we were rich and powerful enough to laugh at everybody else. And since that will never happen, I will probably NEVER attend a high school reunion.
02. For Everyone One I Like… – For every one person in high school I liked, I disliked three or five. I know I said earlier that I didn’t have a bad high school experience. It’s true, I didn’t. But just because I knew and could converse superficially with 98% of my class doesn’t mean I enjoyed it then. And I wouldn’t enjoy it now. When you’re with the same people every day, 180 days a year for four years, you get to know everybody — at the very least — on a base level. Some people you learn more about. You ascend friendship mountain. And, unfortunately for me, most of the people I climbed with I didn’t really like. Maybe it was a product of our geography, maybe it was a generational thing that had to do with how we were raised…but beyond the superficial daily interactions I had with classmates I didn’t care for a lot of those people. A lot of them were idiots. Some of them were spoiled brats. Most of them would never amount to much. So I kept my close circle, and everyone else could pretty much fuck off for all I cared.
01. Facebook Killed It – 99% of the people I went to high school with — who I’d like to stay in touch with — is accessible via social networking to an insane degree. Forget simple communication with phones, texts, or hanging out when I’m in town. That’s my preferred method of “catching up” (face-to-face interaction). But for the mass of other people who I’d keep up with if I had the option of using an easier way to keep up with people…there’s Facebook. So even though I haven’t seen or spoken to Chian from my Photo II class since 1999 her Facebook profile says she’s married to a woman so odds are she wouldn’t get drunk enough to fuck me in the parking lot anyway. My point is, in the year 2011 ten years simply isn’t a long enough period of time to care about your high school graduating class. I already know who has children. I know who’s been successful in business and who has not. I know who’s been arrested, who’s died (I don’t think anyone has died, but I could be wrong), I know who’s vacationed where, who’s married to whom, and since reunions are pretty much all small-talk anyway…I’m not missing anything. That’s pretty much it. Maybe in ten more years when no one uses Facebook anymore…then I’ll make an appearance. Also it’ll give me ten more years to actually make something of myself so I have a story to tell whoever else is pathetic enough to show up seeking validation from acquaintances they knew for a small window of time during their formative years.
Bear in mind my parents were in the process of divorcing each other pretty much the ENTIRE time I was in high school, so that definitely color my experience. I remember having a lot of dark thoughts at the time and resenting pretty much everyone who had a normal family. So…there’s that. But even so, fuck high school reunions! They’re useless like your sister’s puss.
