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?"