There I Go

I guess this is the first time I've mentioned it. Had my ten-year high school reunion last Saturday and myself and the wife(1) made the trip back to Steubenville for it.
I'm not much for reunions, obviously. I sometimes don't even enjoy spending time with my current friends, let alone my rarely-spoken-to friends of over ten years ago, let further alone my don't-now-care-for-nor-did-I-even-ten-plus-years-ago classmates. Two things caused me to buy the plane tickets, though: Sara was curious, and one particular legit friend from that time requested the presence of a few people cause her parents moved out of the area and doesn't ever see anyone during the inevitable holiday meet-ups. Mostly, I wanted Sara to whet her appetite for all things relating to my stunning history, and especially I thought it would be hilarious for her to see a real live Ohio high school football Friday night.(2)
Once the plans were made I developed my own sense of curiosity and hope. Curious about how this very specific almost-right-of-passage experience would measure up to all the stereotypes, and hope that I'd walk away with a funny story or two.
I ended up rather disappointed, in a sorta comprehensive sense. Sure, I got to spend some time over two nights with the few people I actually enjoy seeing now. And any brief trip to my hometown is nice on its own. But the reunion itself was anticlimactic, subdued, overpriced, and just plain boring. Not boring in that I got bored, because I entertained myself, but boring on its own.
A small part of this might be my fault: I joked with a friend that we'd compete to see who could talk to the smallest amount of people, and to a large extent, upheld this goal. Only a couple times did I make a point of walking up and saying hello to someone, and even in most group settings I didn't bother to engage everyone there. But what was weird to me is that lots of other people there were doing barely more. Most everyone just kinda stayed in their groups. No one got obnoxiously drunk that I could tell. No one made a scene, no one chucked a drink in someone's face, no one let loose with any pent-up angst like the ex-girlfriend of Jerry's in that Seinfeld episode about George's chocolate-stained shirt. No one seemed intent on making up for lost slut time. No one was embarrassingly fat. No one was embarrassingly bald.(3) No one was walking around trying to brag about owning a yacht or inventing the E-ZPass. Everyone just sorta minded their business, like good midwesterners.
The food was bad but that was no surprise. The drinks were only free for the first two, then average-priced. The music was set to play nothing but late-90s hits, which was novel for about four songs but then got real old, especially when I heard the same song twice.(4,5) This cost me and the wife $75. Maybe I've got too much uppity NYC in me now, I don't know.
I did experience a moment of serious fascination after the official reunion ended. Most people decided to follow each other to a nearby bar called the Triple Play Cafe, located in the middle of a strip mall, just a couple doors down from K-Mart. The Triple Play Cafe is everything you might imagine, right down to the Guinness in a plastic cup and amazingly the same DJ working as handled the reunion, saying things like this before songs: "This one goes out to Indian Creek's class of '99." Anyhow, the fascinating aspect was that lots of people showed up at the bar who weren't at the reunion. At first I thought, well that's odd. Then I naively wondered why they come back into town just to go to a bar? Then I realized, shit, some of these people probably were embarrassed about going alone and so didn't, or, worse, simply couldn't afford the $75. Then it occurred to me that most of them were still locals and were just doing what they'd normally do on a Saturday night. A couple may have even turned around on their bar stools and wondered why in hell so many of their damn former classmates were there. Once my thoughts on the subject had come full circle, I came to somewhat envy those people, because here they were enjoying themselves on their own terms in a bar without having to go through the motions of a reunion and it's un-free-ness; but also to pity them because perhaps this amount of old classmates being back in town would represent a high point for them.
I can't decide if that thought is hugely condescending and presumptuous of me. I don't know the facts of their lives now anymore than I did a month or a decade ago. I didn't change much at all as a person from spending 12 years with them as a youth or spending a couple hours with them as an adult. I think that's the main thing I'll take away from the reunion experience.
Also, don't expect to see me at the 20, 30, 40 or 50th ones.


1. This might be the first time I've ever used the phrase "the wife" in print, or whatever this typed medium would be called. I'll let you decide and prepare accordingly, but I'm pretty sure I'm the type of guy to use that phrase a lot.
2. I was told my school would be playing at home last weekend. I was either lied to, or the AD selfishly switched up the schedule and left me with nothing. The only HS football tidbit I got was looking out over the outskirts of Pittsburgh as we descended below the clouds and toward the airport at about 7:00pm, seeing the little oases of lights denoting a football stadium in the throes of local pride. I spotted at least five or six.
3. You know my take on this, that "embarrassingly bald" is an oxymoron. I mean in the eyes of society.
4. Seriously, DJ-dude? The same song twice in a three-hour gig? On a related note, why in the hell do people still pay DJs to work events like this? Pay someone a small fee to rent and set up some speakers/amps and make a simple playlist. It's 2009, why do we need a live body pressing play or flipping records? These guys should go the way of typewriters.
5. I had no idea, but apperently my class song was/is "Turn the Page" by Bob Seger. Yeah. How would you feel if these were the same people that voted you Most Likely to Succeed? It's not even a big-fish-little-pond situation, more like sorta-average-sized-fish-little-pond.