10 years in the making...

Friday night, I attended my 10 year high school class reunion being held at a one of the three local bars. Classy huh! Actually, the location could have been worse/funnier since two years ago, my older sister’s reunion was held at the American Legion Post. Ah ha ha ha. Anyway, 10 year reunion…..yes I am getting old. I feel like I have accomplished a lot in the last decade, but I guess each person’s opinion of accomplishments is different. Case in point – babies. I swear it was an all out baby fest. People had one, two, even three children and they kept whipping out pictures of their kids. I felt a bit left out so I contemplated whipping out my driver’s license just so that I would have a picture to show around. I tease about my yokel Nebraska upbringings, so I am a bit relieved that the natives had enough sense to bring the picture, and not the baby to the bar.

I actually was really looking forward to the reunion (yes yes, I am a dork, well I guess that didn’t change since high school) because I was curious to see how the last decade had changed (or lack thereof) my classmates. Granted I still keep in touch with some friends, but you know there always a few loose cannon, crazy hillbillies that you are really eager to see what has become of them. Come on, every school had a few….those people who would dye their hair blue, wear sweat pants every day, or are petitioning to have buck hunting added to the winter Olympics. These are the people who you just ask ‘how have you been’ and then sit back for a wild and entertaining oddball story.

Well the drinks flowed like water….well actually vodka flavored water. Anyway, the super cheap booze was the biggest (and most used) surprise of the evening. Seriously, I order three top shelf mixed drinks and my bill was only $10! Ahh, that is the same price for one very lousy cranberry concoction in Manhattan! With more booze came the entertainment. My friend (or BFF as Brandon calls it…wait when did he turn into a 13 year old girl) Shannon just learned about text messaging and used it to order us a round from the bar. Granted, we were only 30 feet from the bar, but she texted her husband “we need five mike’s hard lemonade…STAT” (oh did I mention she is a doctor…it makes is a bit more funny…okay I guess you had to be there fun haters).

Everyone was so friendly and a ton of fun to talk to. Not kidding, it was like the stereotype high school clicks all but disappeared. It was soooo much fun reminiscing with the girls I was in a posse with. We decided after much discussion, that our click would be summed up as “nice to your face, rip you apart for our own amusement behind your back”. Seriously, we were such good, nice, sweet, blah blah blah girls, but if your opinion of us would switch after reading our junior yearbook. Basically we got punch drunk one night (not real drunk since we were goodie-goodies) and tore thru that thing writing our thoughts on people and activities. I seem to recall the VICA team was dubbed “very into chugging alcohol”. I cannot even estimate the hours of hilarity Mrs. Walker’s ass provided. Yep, nothing was sacred like the smoking nurse or people who grew fungus under their armpits. Okay okay, pure evil I know. I am waiting for that call from Ricki Lake or Maury Povich asking me to come on their show because someone from my past wants to confront me.

Thankfully, most of the people resembled their old self barring some improvements with age and wisdom (Rollie, I’m talking about your haircut…ah ha ha ha). I only had to ask two people who they were. Yeah embarrassing and quite the bitch of me since our class only had 85 people! Turns out, one was Bodie who was my first real kiss. Yeah, the girls gave me hell about it (especially a situation involving a donut….long story), but I am not ashamed since he still looked pretty handsome. Anyway the ribbing stopped once we pointed out Lynn’s first French was with Cody! Ah ha ha ha, how our preferences in boys change. Trials of teenage dating did not stop there since Jessica G. pointed out that Lynn and I both briefly dated Tony Simon who had four fingers on one hand (Simon not Simpson right?). No joke! Ah ha ha ha!

The most humorous moment of the night (well we thought it was the funniest probably due to the vast quantities of alcohol we had drunk by then) was destroying the class of 1997 shrine. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure we did not intend to ruin it, I just know it was utterly defeated by the time everyone had their way with it. The shrine was composed of pieces of poster board topped with streamers and a banner honoring the class of 1997. Each individual graduate’s senior picture was stuck to the poster board. Remember senior pictures….wallet sized trading cards with you posed next to your favorite wagon wheel, giant ’97 number, or faux bookshelf/fireplace background (hey this is Nebraska, there were plenty of hay bales, pick up trucks, and hunting gear proudly on display). Anyway, the destruction started when Dugan joined our group with his senior picture affixed to his baseball cap. It was the most awesome idea ever (granted druuuuunk by this time) and we all sought out the shrine to pluck our pictures off. The ode to ’97 was hidden off in the dance floor room which was obviously vacant due to the lack of Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, or some other guy crying about how sexy his tractor is. Anyway, after everyone started wearing their own picture (still laughing about that while writing), we found use for the dozen or so pictures of absent classmates. Again, remind you we were slap happy and tipsy, we started putting wrong pictures on people. We put Dan C.’s picture on Andy H. just because someone mistook Andy for Dan earlier in the night. Later we put Mike B.’s picture on Dru, who proudly displayed it for ten minutes before realizing it was not him. Okay, it was damn near hilarious at the time…I guess you had to be there.