Old people eating Jello spiked with Vodka.
I never imagined doing something for 20 straight years. Now I’m so old, I can measure things I haven’t done for 20 straight years, like go to High School.
In fact, I went to a celebration for people who haven’t gone to high school for 20 years, specifically all the people I went to High School with.
I went to my high school reunion, in other words. Please try to keep up.
It was like a pretty good wedding, without God, old people or small children. There was also Jello shots, something I’ve never had at a wedding, because I have fucking class.
Unlike a wedding, the bar was only open for two hours, so we all drank very quickly in the early part of the night. This was wise on the part of the hotel, because by 8:30 we were all drunk enough to pay six bucks for a bottle of domestic beer chilling in an open cooler.
Jesus, I’m disorganized writing about this. I’m old, goddamit. I have to choose my chairs carefully and I worry about eating too much meat and all that shit.
It all started on Friday night. One of my coevals managed to land a job teaching Spanish to the undeserving zit-faced twerps that sit in the seats that I used to sit when I was DAZZLING classmates with my bleached forelocks and enormously tough Levi’s jacket.
Anyway, she swung us a tour of the school. So we assembled late this past Friday afternoon (it was fucking HOT, yo!) and took a tour. It was weird and creepy and kind of fun looking at all the old crap, which has made somehow new and improved. They up and added a second story for example, and built a swell little performance space.
It was into that performance space we entered and watched a show put on by a few alumni, who played guitars and sang songs and generally were all talented and shit. One chappie, who evidently had some sort of crazy ass twenty-years, even got up and presented a poem of epic length in free verse, accompanying himself on a squeezebox. This same gentleman once called me a “pencil-necked geek”. So, people change. Remember that.
It nice to find out how enormously rude I can still be, talking loudly during the performance to Yvonne and Caprice, hitting up Chris M. up for gum.
After the show, we all went to the Round-Up Salon (this is around 25 people, I’m guessing, out of a possible 350) a former biker bar (like extremely former, like forty years former) that has become the townie bar in the little burgh my high school was located in.
Things started to go all soft and weird, very dreamlike. Like a stress dream, though not unpleasant. Faces I know, but faces that aren’t the age I know them as, all bobbing and weaving and sweaty in this tiny, crappy, hot little bar. I talked to a guy about a mutual friend who died of a sudden heart attack, had a long buzzed conversation with a friend’s husband, and I tricked people into buying me beer, which is the way to go at these things.
I drove home, a little too drunkish probably, blasting death metal in my Honda.
Saturday afternoon, I dragged my long suffering family to a picnic on Satan’s Anvil – a scorching afternoon by the reservoir, where we stared at each other’s bald spots through the heatwaves rising up off the dead lawn. Paula and the kids, sensibly, took refuge under the play structure and I brought friends to them. We lasted maybe an hour, then fled to the coast for ice cream (Earl Grey ice cream. Fucking delicious shit) (Look, Paula and I goddamn old and we're usually home out of the sun, watching our stories and playing Go Fish in the cool of our home) That night Paula had people over for dinner, while I went and made an ass of myself dancing to New Order and the English Beat.
That night, the shit went OFF.
Not really, but it was fun seeing people being all grown and shit. Liz, Roger, Yvonne, Chris, Sam, Neil, Dave L., Corey, Ryan W, Heidi making out with Dave (recent development: Heidi and Dave are all into each other and making out. But they’re in their late thirties so it’s a lot less gross if they were making out as teen-agers) and a bunch of other people, all handsome and sleek and well.
I dunno. It was fun. You should go to yours.
(Thanks to Liz for convincing me to go.)
In fact, I went to a celebration for people who haven’t gone to high school for 20 years, specifically all the people I went to High School with.
I went to my high school reunion, in other words. Please try to keep up.
It was like a pretty good wedding, without God, old people or small children. There was also Jello shots, something I’ve never had at a wedding, because I have fucking class.
Unlike a wedding, the bar was only open for two hours, so we all drank very quickly in the early part of the night. This was wise on the part of the hotel, because by 8:30 we were all drunk enough to pay six bucks for a bottle of domestic beer chilling in an open cooler.
Jesus, I’m disorganized writing about this. I’m old, goddamit. I have to choose my chairs carefully and I worry about eating too much meat and all that shit.
It all started on Friday night. One of my coevals managed to land a job teaching Spanish to the undeserving zit-faced twerps that sit in the seats that I used to sit when I was DAZZLING classmates with my bleached forelocks and enormously tough Levi’s jacket.
Anyway, she swung us a tour of the school. So we assembled late this past Friday afternoon (it was fucking HOT, yo!) and took a tour. It was weird and creepy and kind of fun looking at all the old crap, which has made somehow new and improved. They up and added a second story for example, and built a swell little performance space.
It was into that performance space we entered and watched a show put on by a few alumni, who played guitars and sang songs and generally were all talented and shit. One chappie, who evidently had some sort of crazy ass twenty-years, even got up and presented a poem of epic length in free verse, accompanying himself on a squeezebox. This same gentleman once called me a “pencil-necked geek”. So, people change. Remember that.
It nice to find out how enormously rude I can still be, talking loudly during the performance to Yvonne and Caprice, hitting up Chris M. up for gum.
After the show, we all went to the Round-Up Salon (this is around 25 people, I’m guessing, out of a possible 350) a former biker bar (like extremely former, like forty years former) that has become the townie bar in the little burgh my high school was located in.
Things started to go all soft and weird, very dreamlike. Like a stress dream, though not unpleasant. Faces I know, but faces that aren’t the age I know them as, all bobbing and weaving and sweaty in this tiny, crappy, hot little bar. I talked to a guy about a mutual friend who died of a sudden heart attack, had a long buzzed conversation with a friend’s husband, and I tricked people into buying me beer, which is the way to go at these things.
I drove home, a little too drunkish probably, blasting death metal in my Honda.
Saturday afternoon, I dragged my long suffering family to a picnic on Satan’s Anvil – a scorching afternoon by the reservoir, where we stared at each other’s bald spots through the heatwaves rising up off the dead lawn. Paula and the kids, sensibly, took refuge under the play structure and I brought friends to them. We lasted maybe an hour, then fled to the coast for ice cream (Earl Grey ice cream. Fucking delicious shit) (Look, Paula and I goddamn old and we're usually home out of the sun, watching our stories and playing Go Fish in the cool of our home) That night Paula had people over for dinner, while I went and made an ass of myself dancing to New Order and the English Beat.
That night, the shit went OFF.
Not really, but it was fun seeing people being all grown and shit. Liz, Roger, Yvonne, Chris, Sam, Neil, Dave L., Corey, Ryan W, Heidi making out with Dave (recent development: Heidi and Dave are all into each other and making out. But they’re in their late thirties so it’s a lot less gross if they were making out as teen-agers) and a bunch of other people, all handsome and sleek and well.
I dunno. It was fun. You should go to yours.
(Thanks to Liz for convincing me to go.)
Labels: Greg's Life As Nincompoop
posted by Greg Mills at 2:23 PM
2 Comments:
Well, if you just had yours, then mine must have been last year. As you can probably now guess, I missed it, if there even was one. I remember the 10 year one came around when I was living in Portugal, and my decision was that if I were meant to go, some school association would pay for it. They didn't. So, I guess I'm stuck waiting for the next big number (25? 30?)
Well, if you're in Portugal, then by all means, stay in Portugal.
My reunion was about four miles from my house, so it would have been peevish on my part not to go, although I considered it. My friend Liz convinced me to go.
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