Reunion

On Friday night we were scheduled to go to my husband's 25th high school reunion. We've been to his reunions before and they have been mostly fun though the last one - the 20th - was just after C was sick and my dad died; we were so emotionally spent, and I barely remember it. I wonder what impression we made then.

My husband has stayed in touch with several people from high school. I attribute this to his having gone to a small school in a small town. There were under 100 kids in his graduating class; there were almost 600 in mine. As such, I know many of the characters. But even if we are almost all somewhat known quantities, I wanted to look nice (read: rockin'!) in the presence of the ex-girlfriends and several classmates who were already on to their 2nd/trophy wives.

On Wednesday night, we received an email that the formal reunion event had been canceled. Response had been tepid. Instead, people who could were going to meet up at a local restaurant. As we already had the kids covered, and people we wanted to see appeared to be responding in the affirmative to the restaurant idea, we decided to go to.

It was so lame. Capital L. Lame. And demonstrates why I'll never go to my high school reunions.

We get to the restaurant and spy one woman in the bar area. She leads us back to a small room where "everyone" is. Everyone being eight others. 8. Eight.

I was the only spouse. There was only one other guy. Three of the eight hadn't graduated with the class - one had been with them through 10th grade before going to boarding school, and the other two had left after 8th grade to go to a Catholic school next town over.

So that left five women. And they all live within 20 minutes of the restaurant. They all see each other fairly regularly. Their kids are in recreation leagues together and they go to the same churches. Their parents and siblings are friends.

One of the five was the ex-girlfriend of one of my husband's closer high school friends (who was supposed to show but didn't). I've heard enough about her over the years that it was kind of hard not to call her the less than complimentary nickname by which her former paramour continues to refer to her. Don't ask.

I was kind of shocked with how these women were behaving. Talking about going out to other bars later, and so on. Not my scene. It reeked of mid-life crises.

Over the course of the evening, people we expected to show up didn't. Seems one is still holding a 20 year grudge against one of the five women who was there. Dumb. Just before we left, another guy showed up, clearly a little worse for the years. He's the kind of guy who looks like he was never young. And he definitely looks years older than my husband. None of the ex-girlfriends showed.

Oh, there were two other guys in the restaurant, I learned later, but they decided to stay at the bar. Classy.

I kept thinking back to that Dixie Chicks song, "Long Way Around."

This isn't to say the evening was terrible waste. It was nice to see this one woman. She and my husband were good pals in high school, and I think hubby would like to get back in closer touch. I'll try to make that happen this summer. She's a friend on Facebook now.

And one very sweet thing did happen. The woman who I struggled to call by the correct name had dug out her old photo album and come across a photo of my husband receiving his high school diploma from his mother, who was on the town school committee at the time. She gave it to us to keep. It was very nice of her.

We were on the road early home early, and settled with the kids before it was too late. That was a good thing as the next day hubby was working while I looked after our kids plus a friend's two kids for 10 hours while their parents went to an event. But that's another story...