Unnecessarily early nostalgia

So what lands its way to my inbox this week but the invitation to a high school reunion. Mine, as it happens to be. While I contemplate how old and pathetic I feel in the face of such promise of youth, I'm left reflecting on what a silly idea this ten year anniversary is.

For example, this isn't 1943 anymore...ten years after high school a great number of my classmates still live with their parents: of the four girls on the contact sheet for the reunion, three of them still have their maiden names and parents telephone numbers. The other is married (to be fair, one of the others is engaged and the classmate who forwarded me the email is also married), but she was married within a year of high school. A two year reunion would have covered the same ground for her.

Thinking back on the "Good Old High School Daze"^TM I'm left thinking how really lousy they really were, and how many of those people I knew back then I have no interest in seeing.^† This isn't a new development either: back in Grade 12 I gave specific warning that I was not going to be attending any premature reunions. I told them I would be at the 25 year reunion party (weather permitting) [and barring unfortunate demise caused by not knocking on wood while typing this entry -ed] but not to expect me at any previous one.

Now while I had no doubt in my mind that a mere decade away from these people would prove insufficient for my opinions of them to mellow, I nevertheless was approaching this upcoming date with a small amount of dread. I knew that I would be tempted, were I sitting at home playing X-box or out having a drink at Elephant and Castle on Whyte, to drive down there and succumb to the temptation of visiting the big party "just to see how its going".

Fortunately, the fates have smiled kindly on me in this matter: the date is scheduled during a period in which I will not be in the country [astute readers of this blog will recall that this might just mean he's in Kelowna, so don't get so excited -ed] and therefore have no chance whatsoever to be tempted to go down and check it out. That's so awesome.

The only wrinkle is that they want an up-to-date photograph and writeup of "what I've been up to" for an updated yearbook. I'm afraid I can't get out of this one: my mother will simply write one if I don't do it, and she'll leave out all the good parts [the Class of 1996 would never get over missing out on learning that rather than being poor and alone in Edmonton their esteemed classmate was in fact poor and alone blogging in Edmonton -ed]. Probably worth the $5 just to have that memory of what these people were up to and be safe in the knowledge that this can substitute for actually seeing any of them for another 15 years.

^† There is, as there always is, a couple exceptions. One "friend" (the word is a little strong) I haven't seen since high school, but he's in France with a gorgeous wife [reminding us again that even ugly dorky looking kids can acheive beauty in the bedroom through the virtue of daddy's oil money -ed]. Chatting again with him might be less than horrifically disturbing. And like all men who spend their late 20s blogging, back in high school there was a girl, G_______, who certainly would be nice to see, though I likely wouldn't talk to her. But I already know where she works (the Edmonton Journal nicely stuck her in the paper for me last year) and saw her in person only a couple years ago, though I neglected to (say hello/catch her attention/not hide behind a wall until she passed) and therefore it probably doesn't count. Still, not worth going just to see somebody who doesn't really want to talk to me and might not even be there. $5 can get me her writeup just as easily.