10 Year High School Reunion

I went to my high school reunion the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it was the single weirdest event of my life. It’s one thing to run into someone on the street that you haven’t seen in 10 years. It’s a completely different experience altogether to reunite with 50 people you haven’t seen in a decade within the span of a few hours. “It’s almost as if you need two nights,” said Tony Spencer, one of our class’s many clowns. “You need one night to get over the weirdness and another to actually have fun.”

As teenagers, we spent time together in homeroom, at our lockers, in study halls, and as teammates. And now here we all were seated in the banquet hall of the Endwell Greens Golf Club in Endwell, NY, ready to be served chicken and beef dinners.

Most of these people I hadn’t even thought about once since 1994. I had kept in touch with a few, but the rest were complete mysteries to me. I looked around the room and it seemed as if my classmates had stepped into a time machine at graduation and stepped out that night.

The time machine left sizeable side effects: wedding bands, husbands and wives, and wallets full of pictures of children. On others it left double chins, love handles, and in one case, unrecognizable weight gain. Yet, in others it added fashionable haircuts, stylish wardrobes, and a palpable sophistication and worldliness.

Our homecoming queen, Janelle Lalor, for example, was unrecognizable from the girl next door I remembered in high school. She was always pretty and friendly, but she was also a bit of a dork. Now she had hair that made her look like a model and a body which had shed its geekiness through road races and triathlons. In short, she had become a total babe.

The good feelings didn’t last, however. As the tuxedo-clad DJ started winding down the music, everyone started making after-party plans. Most of us decided to head to the Galley, a local watering hole less than five minutes away. It was in the Galley where the signature drama reminiscent of four years at Seton Catholic Central High School would rear its ugly head.

The first indication I got of traveling back in time to the early 1990’s was when the girl I had been joking around with all night started hitting on another former classmate. Now that I had comfortably returned to girl-repellant status, I decided to sit back, relax, and watch the drunken embarrassment ensue. The culmination of that drunkenness was when Penelope Cruz came up to Rahm Emmanuel and said something about him having said something nasty to her. She then left the bar, with her entourage of friends scrambling to gather their things and follow closely behind, as unsure as the rest of us about what had just happened.

Sometime before that, I found out later, Rahm mentioned to Penelope that he’d heard about her two failed engagements. Penelope, as one would imagine, didn’t take this type of conversation very well. It should be mentioned that Penelope is best friends with Lyla Garity, Rahm’s ex-girlfriend who didn’t go to the reunion. Rahm, I found out later, is known through Lyla’s circle of friends as “the guy who ruined Lyla’s life.” I’d be happy to provide a flow chart to anyone having trouble following.

Meanwhile, many of my former classmates were becoming sloppy, silly, embaressments of themselves. So what had started out as a slightly awkward trip through memories of high school ended in a drunken display of the here and now. Ahhh, Seton Catholic Central, how we loved thee.