Reunion for Cakeeaters

Recently I attended my 25-year high school reunion.  Not being particularly fond of my high school years, like many people, I hadn't attended any other reunions.  I didn't feel like ages 15-17 were the pinnacle of personal achievement so I've always felt more positively about my college years* than about high school.  But when some of my far-flung friends said they were flying back thousands of miles for the event I figured I'd better suck it up, drive the couple miles to a neighboring suburb, and deal with it.

*Or 2nd grade.  Or last week.

As a quiet, shy kid who couldn't play sports and wasn't a band geek I wasn't well-known within my class of 615 students.  I'm reasonably secure with how my life has progressed, but my main apprehension about attending the reunion was:  no one would know who I am.  And not just that they wouldn't remember me, but that they never knew me in the first place and I'd have to spend inordinate amounts of time explaining who I was and convincing people I went to the same school.  On top of being non-memorable personality-wise, with a late birthday I hadn't exactly filled out by the end of school so at reunion time I was around 60 lbs heavier than on graduation day <insert fat joke here> and perhaps not physically memorable either.  While I often prefer anonymity in situations like these, in this case social interaction couldn't be avoided.   I envisioned receiving the following questions:

• Did you go to our school?
• Who the hell are you?
• Do you work here?  Can you bring me a Bud Light?
• I don't remember you.  Did your spouse go to Edina?
• Were you this much of a dork in high school?
• No, seriously.  Who the hell are you?

There's nothing I like less than explaining who the hell I am to the smirking, eyebrow-raised dubious.  I was counting on the Power of the Name Tag to allay some of this.  Also, just like in high school, I would have the protection of the pack.  Four friends now living in Germany, Florida, London, and New York would be with me along with a few local guys like myself who hadn't settled down far from our hometown.  So I put on my 5th-best frock, abstained from an inhibitions-loosening pre-reunion tequila shot, girded my loins, and ventured out of the comforting embrace of my house.

Despite hailing from an affluent Twin Cities suburb our reunion was held at a bar/bowling alley on a par with the one featured in The Big Lebowski.*  We arrived figuring a two hour stay would be sufficient with a built-in escape plan to head to another watering hole downtown with other, non-grad friends.  This knowledge reassured me, along with the fact that I'd driven us to the joint and could theoretically ditch at any time.

*I learned later another grad from a different year owned it.  A swankier joint was featured at the 20th reunion but apparently no one liked the formality.  The dude (who plans these events) abides.

In a greater upset than Great Britain recently winning gold medals in activities where there is sunshine, we ended up staying 6 hours until 1 AM.  Most of this time was spent talking amongst our own circle of friends, just like in high school.  And just like in high school, mingling was still awkward for me.  It was sometimes hard to identify whom I knew from those days within the gathered crowd and therefore would be safe to converse with.  People fell about evenly into these categories:

• People we knew and recognized immediately.  "Wow, he hasn't changed."
• People we knew back in the day but weren't recognizable without the name tag.  "Yeesh, what happened to her?"
• People we never knew and didn't recognize even with a name.  "That dude?  I got nuthin'."

As the event unfolded I realized a troubling flaw in my name tag strategy:  if you needed to get close enough to read someone's name tag you were already committed, and therefore already on the off-ramp to Awkwardville, population You.  You had to get so close to read the name that if you realized you DIDN'T know the person, or didn't want to talk to him or her, then you were stuck.  As a result you found yourself two feet away from someone with a derp* expression on your face trying to conjure conversation from nowhere.

*Example of a derp expression:

 Other highlights of the night:

• One egregiously drunk woman propositioning one of my friends for extramarital canoodling after being shamelessly goaded to do so by one of our other friends
• Various accusations of botox and plastic surgery
• A complete disdain for the bowling lanes, despite the exhortations of our homecoming queen to get rolling
• A painfully lengthy conversation about IT careers with the highly over-served girlfriend of a guy we barely knew.  The conversation concluded with her sudden concern regarding the whereabouts of her fallen name tag, which she searched for by thoroughly groping her female frontal parts.  My friend and I politely snuck away at this point.

The coup of the night was our friend Sean snagging a picture of the woman arguably* considered the babe of our class.  To protect the innocent I will refer to her as Fatima**.  Sean was talking to a couple other women that we knew a little bit.  Fatima happened to arrive at the reunion just then and stopped briefly to say Hi to one of those other women on her way by.  Sean, who as a U.S. Marine with combat experience knows how to identify and track a high-value target, suddenly erupted with, "Hey, how about a picture!"  Courtesy required Fatima to smile and pose for this completely unplanned picture that now included Sean.  I believe a medal is in order for this.

*I said ARGUABLY!
**Not only was there no real Fatima in our class, I would wager that a Fatima has never attended our high school. 

In retrospect, the whole thing was no big deal.  A couple people recognized me, most didn't.*  I'm sure I'll never see most of these people again unless I go to another reunion.  People clustered in some of the same old cliques but it was more about hanging with who you knew.  I was genuinely curious about what life and career paths people had chosen but it was impossible to learn anything without having detailed one-on-one conversations.  No one was extra bling-y, no one showed up in a limo, and I didn't hear anyone raving about out-sized career success or precocious children.  After 25 years, we are what we are.  My friend Richard probably summed it up best:  "I'm telling my kids that it doesn't matter what people in high school think about you.  In 25 years no one cares."


*As I was walking out the door at the end of the night I threw away my name tag and then paused to let someone catch up.  At that moment, as I stood a mere 3 feet from freedom, a woman from our class came up and uttered, "Hi, I don't recognize you.  What's your name?"

Observations on Spring Break in the Florida Keys

I've compiled a few random observations and comments from our recent spring break trip to Key Largo.  We went with another family and had a great time but, as always, there are some things that merit further explanation...

First Class, sort of

Endless slogging back and forth to Connecticut resulted in the whole family getting upgraded to first class for the flight to Miami.  Free booze!  Vacation drinking starts early!

        Me:  "I'll have a whiskey and ginger ale"
        The flight attendant delivers just a ginger ale.  I'm not one to make a big fuss so I throw that back so I can order again.  This time I aim for something that I assume can't be interpreted any other way than a plea for booze.

        Me:  "Can I get a GIN AND TONIC?"
       And...I get another ginger ale.  Should I have written it down?  Is there a special language spoken only by veteran first class travelers to which I'm not privy?  I could make a stink at this point to get this rectified, in the process presenting myself as an alcohol-craving d-bag, which I am but I try not to show it in public.  I know, I know -- first world problems.  Deciding to sit quietly, I go back to my movie and dream longingly of a well-stocked bar at our rental house.

Bidet
Our bathroom had a bidet in it, which I regarded the same way, and gave as wide a berth to, as I would a hemorrhoidal gator.

Compensating
What's with all of the Hummers in the Keys?  Expecting a blizzard?  Preparing to armor-up for an invasion from Cuba?  Anomalous preponderance of Small Penis Syndrome?  Yes, yes I think so.

A Dolphin's Perspective

         "Hi, my name is Molly and I'm one of the trained dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon in the Florida Keys.  Just got out of ANOTHER staff meeting.  Half of what I do is go to meetings.  How am I supposed to get anything done?  Plus, that lecher from accounting was scoping out my tail fluke again.  Creep."

          "Anyhoo, that last borefest was to review the day's schedule.  Looks like my first task is to be the dolphin partner for some dopes from Minnesota for the DRC's swim-with-the-dolphins experience.  There's seven of them so I better swim over and see what they look like."

           "OK, fine, fine, young kids -- this is good, not too bad, this is doable... HOLY CRIKEY HE'S A LOAD!  Dammit, one of the dads is the size of a manatee and I can't believe I have to drag his ass around the lagoon.  One of my tricks is to pull people around the water while they hang on to my dorsal fin.  He'll probably pull mine clear off -- assuming I don't first sink to the bottom from sheer exhaustion after towing that cargo barge around.  At least I'll get the union-mandated bump for the extra tonnage.  And that other dad:  he looks OK but if he starts dancing during the mimicry portion of the routine I'm just going to splash him."

Things

• Things Minnesota has that Florida doesn't:  curbs
• Things Florida has that Minnesota doesn't:  buckets of chum for sale.  "Chum Bucket:  $19.99"  Minnesota has its fair share of bait and minnow vendors but that doesn't grab one's attention like chum.  First of all, "chum" is just a fun word to say.  Second, chum means sharks, not walleye, and sharks move the interest needle much more.  You can't empty an ocean-front swimming area with cries of a walleye sighting.
• Other things Florida has that Minnesota doesn't:  random, backwater, health-code-violation-waiting-to-happen-looking restaurants that surprisingly crank out good food.  We hit two after mid-day activities:  Fish Tales and The Hungry Tarpon.   The Minnesota equivalents of these would have melted Velveeta on every menu item and the side dish would have been jello-based.  In the Keys you get a well-made fresh fish dish and a reasonable beer selection, all appearances to the contrary.

He Chose...Poorly

• Florida tattoo shops:  enabling unwise self-decoration choices by alcohol-addled tourists every 600 yards.  I guess if they were spaced as much as a mile apart someone might sober up so better cram a couple more in there.

Whiteout Conditions -- Take Shelter

Key Largo, FL -- Local public health authorities in Key Largo, FL, along with the Department of Homeland Security, are preparing citizens for a cataclysmic event that will surely stress the emergency response infrastructure.  On Sunday April 1st, David L. Carl of Eden Prairie, MN will emerge from his vacation rental house and remove his t-shirt, exposing his ultra-pasty-white torso to the tropical elements for the first time.  The resulting reflection, which could approach the brightness of a hydrogen bomb detonation, has local officials gearing up for the worst.

"We're advising residents to stay inside, especially young children, the elderly, and anyone with a weak stomach," cautioned Key Largo Chief of Police Don Wilson.  "The blinding flash from the sun hitting his body could do permanent retinal damage to anyone in a 5-mile radius and might melt surrounding structures.  Plus, it will certainly be visually upsetting."

Despite the mild winter in Minnesota, Mr. Carl still has not seen direct sunlight for over 6 months.  Scientists brought in from MIT have struggled to properly identify and measure the level of paleness  in his skin.  "Our machines simply aren't calibrated for a color that doesn't exist anywhere else in nature or even a laboratory," said mechanical engineering senior Rebecca Livingston.  "Plus, there's a lot of surface area we're dealing with here -- he's no ballerina."  Mr. Carl's skin color has been variously described as "translucent," "non-existent," "uber-pasty," and "so, so friggin' white -- a white not seen since biblical times," the latter of which Behr is considering as a new paint name.

His skin is so pasty that it's possible the sunlight will go right through him.  In that case the only people in danger would be those standing immediately behind him.  Hazmat suits will be issued to the family and friends traveling with him.  Public health officials advised them not to arrive in Key Largo until the 2nd when the highest risk should have passed.

No such luck for local residents.  "If we can just survive the first 10 minutes we should be OK," continued Sheriff Wilson.  "A boy that pasty is gonna burn to a crisp in no time.  Once he's a good reddish-pink we'll be past the most dangerous point.  But people should still wear protective eye-wear.  If he flips over onto his stomach we could have a secondary flashpoint."  Wilson then seemed to be lost in thought, as if he was envisioning the horrific aftermath of such an event.

South Florida residents aren't the only ones at risk.  "This flash could reverberate across the oceans, like the tsunami from a couple years ago," advised Chet Grundler of DHS.  "We're alerting other Caribbean nations and even West Africa to warn their citizens to stay indoors."  DHS officials are also arranging for post-traumatic stress counselors to be available for the survivors.

Dave's Extremely Helpful Guide to Accents of Major English-Speaking Nations

Based on my VAST foreign travels and lengthy study of linguistics I've compiled this extremely helpful and scholarly diagram showing how to recognize the country of origin of a particular English accent.

Les Mis and Mortality

A recent viewing of Les Miserables at the Orpheum, of all things, reminded me of the summer of 2010 when, like the main character but for different reasons, I had to seriously analyze my own mortality and what it meant for raising my daughter.  For more than four months that year my body deteriorated to the point where I had to assume, for the first time in my life, that I wouldn't live to the ripe old age I'd hoped for.  And if I had to calibrate my life goals downward, that meant I had to think hard about what I owed my daughter with the life that I had left.  It wasn't like I was going to keel over suddenly but cashing social security checks didn't seem guaranteed.  It's going to take a bit of back story to set this up.

I've had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in my hips and knees since age 13.  To keep this shorter than a Stephen King novel I'm going to summarize hip and knee JRA like this:  it's a drag.  But that ain't nothing compared to what arthritis is like when you get it in your back and neck, which is what happened to me in late spring of 2010.  When arthritis moves into your back and neck it's known as the Scrabble-rific Ankylosing Spondylitis.  During the day I could barely function;  every movement hurt.  At the office, I looked forward to conference calls because I could close my door, put my headset on, mutter something every once in a while, and the rest of the time put my head on the desk and simply try to exist.  At night I was completely useless, the aches and pains so bad that I often went to bed at 7.  Karen was thinking, "What, this is all I get?"  My situation was obvious to most:  over the years I've gotten good at disguising a limp but I couldn't hide the fact that I couldn't turn my neck.

Along similarly cheery lines, rarely has a story been more aptly named than Les Miserables.  Justice and fairness were in short supply in early 1800s France and Jean Valjean enjoyed even less than the other dregs of society depicted by the actors.  Pursued by Inspector Javert for most of his life for stealing a loaf of bread, Valjean finally carves out something of a life under an alias and agrees to adopt and care for the daughter of a woman whose own misery index was off the charts.   Hey, let's set this zany story to music!  His life becomes a crusade to protect and nurture the daughter, interspersed with a song here and there about how crummy things are. 

Back to my miserables, the worst case scenario for hip and knee arthritis is joint replacement, something I had to consider as early as age 17 but have skated without so far.  What has made me semi-normal over the years is fairly powerful anti-inflammatory medication.  Helped with hangovers too.  Unfortunately, it didn't make a dent in A.S.  The worst case scenario for Ankylosing Spondylitis is, uh, you grind to a halt.  There is no vertebrae replacement surgery.  My doctor's proposed treatment cost $2000 per month and he wasn't sure it would work.  I was staring complete disability right in the face.

It was easy to assume that there was no way I was going to live to an age where one gets to enjoy being cantakerous with this amount of wear and tear on my body.  It was draining just to get through a day with minimal activity -- there was no way I could handle years of this.  I started worrying about supporting my family.  And that led to wondering how much of my daughter's life I was going to see.  Again, I wasn't going to expire in the next couple months, but could my body take this beating for another 20 years?  10?

Seeing my daughter have kids?  Maybe not.  Seeing her get married?  Iffy.  That could easily be 20+ years from now.  Jean Valjean protected his adopted daughter until he was certain she'd marry a decent fellow.  In Napolean-era, lower-class France that was about the best a dad could do for his female offspring.  If you simply kept her out of prostitution you were ahead of the game.

Goals are a bit loftier in our current age, Toddlers and Tiaras notwithstanding.  I settled on getting her through college as the minimum for which I needed to stick around.  At that point, my work is mostly done anyway and she should have the tools to make her way through life and figure out the rest. That meant squeezing out 12 or so more years and being able to work long enough to cover the Lexus-a-year tuition costs.

Arthritis is my Inspector Javert, the man who ruthlessly hunted and hounded Jean Valjean across decades.  But arthritis won't throw itself off a bridge and it definitely won't bring the audience to its feet with a rousing solo.   The provisional happy ending to my story is... the spendy medication is working for me.  The manufacturer helps pay for it (And how much are they making on this if they're paying most of my costs to take it?  Let's get Anderson Cooper on this.) and the weekly shots have returned me to what passes for normal.  But there are no guarantees that it will continue to be affordable or that it'll continue to ameliorate my condition.

At the end of Les Mis, which coincides with the end of Jean Valjean's life, he sees his daughter get married and he is overwhelmed with relief and love.  About 2/3 of the way through the performance I had made the connection between Jean Valjean's epic journey and my atypical circumstances.  Even though I'm mostly past the fear of my body grinding to a halt, Les Mis reminded me of the tremendous responsibility of getting my daughter into a sustainable adulthood.  I was a lot more emotional at the end of that musical than probably any other male in the theater, most of whom were probably thinking, "What kind of glare will I get if I pull up ESPN on my iPhone right now?"  MonsieurValjean, I know a little something of what this means.