Got a friend request on Facebook from a guy from my old school days, and it was such a kick to hear from him! (Foodleking, it was PG – think curly hair and barely-restrained anarchy.) <\/p>\n
I wrote up the story back then for a family blog, but for PG and Foodleking’s sake, I hereby publicly share an expurgated version with names and telling biographical details omitted. <\/p><\/div>\n
But the highlight of the weekend was Saturday night, when the actual reunion happened. (The highlight for me, anyway. Mrs. Cornell was bored out of her gourd, but I was bored when I went to her reunion in July, so I guess we\u2019re even. It was fun to show her off to everybody. She was much hotter than all the other ladies that I remembered lusting after in high school, all of whom are much, much older than me now.)<\/p>\n
I have to admit, I was somewhat nervous going in. I knew that everyone else was going to be much richer than we were, and I was worried that no one would want to see me. I didn\u2019t need to worry \u2013 it was a blast from beginning to end. I saw people I had completely forgotten, and I got to catch up with old friends. <\/p><\/div>\n
TM\/F was there \u2013 a fellow Mormon who became a pot-smoking Deadhead and who is now a Mormon again. She lives here in Utah and wants a Woodland Hills reunion \u2013 she says she sees my brother every once in awhile.<\/p>\n
CG showed up, and it was really fun to see her. She was my old theatre buddy who convinced me to run for Senior Class President. She got really mad when she found out I was a Republican. She turned pale and said \u201cyou don\u2019t really believe that stuff, do you?\u201d When I assured her that I did, she rattled off a series of what she considered to be unanswerable questions. \u201cYou mean you don\u2019t hate Dick Cheney? You really like George Bush? You like this war? You really think he responded well to Katrina? You think he cares about the plight of the poor?\u201d<\/p>\n
The questions came as quickly as she could spew them, and I just tried to deflect them with a smile and a kind word. Understand that they weren\u2019t challenges or invitations to discussion \u2013 they were statements of incredulity, asked in the same way someone might ask if I still believed in the Easter Bunny. In her mind, only a Neanderthal could answer affirmatively to any of her queries. She couldn\u2019t conceive of a human being who could possibly agree with the GOP and still be deserving of her respect.<\/p>\n
To her credit, after a minute or two, when she realized that I wasn\u2019t getting upset or defensive, she calmed down, and we continued to reminisce about high school stuff. \u201cI\u2019m over it now,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can be friends again.\u201d And we were, and we will continue to be.<\/p>\n
I saw SM from a distance \u2013 he was the guy who used to beat me up. I thought I was big enough that I could go and let bygones be bygones, but I decided I had nothing to say to him, so I let it slide. I don\u2019t hate him, though. Although it was nice to see he was much fatter than me.<\/p>\n
I had a hard time answering the question \u201cso what do you do for a living?\u201d None of my answers made any sense. I spent a lot of time talking to MS, a big, tall goofy guy who is still single and is now one of my Facebook friends. He tried out his pick-up line with the single ladies there. It went something like this. \u201cDid you have a crush on me in high school?\u201d When they said no \u2013 as they invariably did \u2013 he then asked \u201chow about now?\u201d<\/p>\n
I can’t imagine why he\u2019s still single.<\/p>\n
JR from my old children’s choir was there, even though she graduated a year after me. She had married JE, the captain of the football team. She said that her sister, R, still plays the flute after Mom taught her. ( I told Mom this, and she has no memory of either R or J. )<\/p>\n
KM was there \u2013 he\u2019s a big TV star now, sort of. You may not know his name, but you\u2019d recognize his face. He\u2019s been on dozens of national TV commercials. When I went to say hello, he grabbed me and dragged me over to meet his wife and say \u201cTHIS is the guy who beat me for Senior Class President!\u201d It was really weird what some people remember. <\/p><\/div>\n
Everybody still lives in Calabasas. Everybody has about two kids \u2013 we had the most at five, tied with RN, another Mormon girl. (Them Mormons is fertile!) Everybody was rich, but nobody seemed to have a job that would make someone rich. MG, who played opposite me as Marion in The Music Man,<\/span> is now a flight attendant. That seemed appropriate. Yet she may have been the one who drove the Lamborghini that was parked out front.<\/p>\n As I think about it, it wasn\u2019t just the age of these people that was disturbing. I was reminded of the line from Raiders of the Lost Ark: \u201cit\u2019s not the age, it\u2019s the mileage.\u201d These people had a lot of miles on them. They seemed hard and weathered. I suppose I seemed the same way to many of them, but I try not to think about it. I’ve got so many miles on me that it’s kind of hard to think coherently anyway. <\/p><\/div>\n