Back To School

My wife's twenty-year high school reunion was this past weekend. As with most school-type reunions, I was in boycott mode. Now, I know what you're thinkin'..."Boy, high school must've really sucked for you." All things considered, high school wasn't that bad. I was voted "most musical" my senior year, played a little baseball and was the feature editor of my school's paper. I belonged to no certain clique, yet was accepted by most and moved freely among them. Looking back, people have said that they thought I was this mysterious guy who lived on the fringe, doing my own thing. That's simplifying things a bit, but there is some truth there.

Back in 1995, I received an invite to my ten-year reunion. Included with the invite was a lengthy questionaire, inquiring as to what I'd been up to for the past decade. I answered the questions, giving info on my marital status, my daughter & a number of other things, like who my favorite teachers were. Eventually, booklets were going to be made up so that we could all check in with our former classmates, regardless of whether we were physically attending the reunion or not.

Weeks after the reunion had passed, my copy of the booklet arrived in the mail. I flipped thru the pages, expecting to see the answers I had placed on my questionaire. What I found were only five words....Bradley is married to Louise. Curiously, I noticed that other former classmates had much more space dedicated to their "beautiful children" and their "fulfilling careers." Some even had nearly two pages of accolades.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that those alotted the most space were the same people that planned the reunion. And, as you might have guessed, among them were the "mean girls" of 1985. You know the type, you'd walk into a party and they'd all scowl at you in unison. Venomous young ladies, all.

I guess that, even after ten years, they still had the compulsion to in some way prove to their classmates that they were superior. The funny thing is, back in '85, the only people who considered them to be superior were them. Ten years later, they no longer looked mean, but just pathetic. Their lives had peaked when they were eighteen and this was their desperate attempt to recapture a little bit of their glory days. You can hardly blame them. It must be a pretty rude awakening to realize that you were once head cheerleader and now you're a fat mother of four with a part-time job at Target. Boy, that must sting. Age has an ironic way of levelling the playing field, doesn't it?

Now, I'm not saying that every kid that was popular, or a football player, or a class officer was an asshole. Many of my best friends were all of these things. The difference between them and the "mean girls" is that they were also good people who knew, even back then, that being the Jake Ryan of your school only carried one so far in the real world.

I'm told that attendance at the ten-year was less than half of our graduating class of two hundred. For the twenty-year, the total was around forty, which included spouses and significant others. So, out of a class of 200, only 10% had anything to do with the last reunion. It's a pity that the "mean girls" didn't use the reunions as an opportunity to show that they'd actually grown up. I would expect that by the time the thirty-year reunion rolls around, the "mean girls" will be the only ones in attendance. Then, the real fun will begin. Without the rest of us there, they'll undoubtedly turn on each other. I'd pay to see that.