I did not invent post-its

"High school hasn’t changed. There’s still that one teacher who marches to her own drummer. Those girls are still there, the ones that, even as you grow up, will remain the most beautiful girls you have ever seen close up. The smart kids, who everyone else knew as ‘the brains,’ but I just knew them as my soul mates, my teachers, my friends. And there’s still that one guy with his mysterious confidence who seems so perfect in every way. The guy you get up and go to school for in the morning. … High school would not have been the same without him. I would not be the same without him."

-Josie Geller, Never Been Kissed

I turned 38 last Sunday. I did what I normally do on my birthday when it falls on a weekend: have pancakes at IHOP (free pancakes on your birthday!) and bought a newspaper to cut out the birthday horoscope. The horoscope lives on my refrigerator for the full year until my next birthday, when I put up the new one and reflect on the previous year's entry. Since my birthday fell on a Sunday, I also got to enjoy the special sections of The Washington Post: Outlook, the Arts, and the Sunday Magazine. I started with Outlook as is my method. After reading a disappointing story about the 45's problem with the truth, I stumbled onto a piece about high school. The writer, Richard Morgan, is the same age as me so he's also facing his 20th high school reunion this year. Unlike me, Morgan's high school is being demolished in order to build a new school. He looked at the demolition of his school as catharsis for the experience of high school; you have to watch it burn (so to speak) to move forward in life. It's like The Washington Post was in my brain or something.

What is it about high school? It has the power to reduce a person to a former version of them self faster than watching The Breakfast Club on repeat. But it's also filled with wonderful memories of friendships, shenanigans, and the type of self discovery that is easily mocked in film but never not needed in real life. If you went to a school like mine, with over 700 people in your graduation class, it can be relatively easy to slip into the shadows of having so many people be involved in this collection memory. You remember exactly who was what: the beautiful people, the brains, the theatre nerds (present and accounted for thank you very much), the stoners, and the jocks. The structure of high school is hardwired into our brains and there's nothing that can stop those groups and cliques from flashing around in your head. It's how high school works.

I didn't go to the 5th or 10th reunion. I don't think I knew that the 5th was happening and the 10th came at a time in my life where I didn't want to hang out with a bunch of people I went to high school with and pretend like A. I really wanted to know what was going on in their lives and B. I wanted to share what was going on in mine. I felt, in 2007, I kept in touch with the people I wanted to either in real life or on the Facebook. I was at a weird place in my life then, having just done the thing I never really planned to do or wanted to do: I moved back to Northern Virginia following Hurricane Katrina. It wasn't like I was admitting defeat or something, but I didn't want to immerse myself back into the world of Burke and Lake Braddock after that. So I stayed away. Then the 20th reunion rolls around and I decided I was going. Interestingly, like 10 years ago, I'm at the beginning of a new part of my life. I'm starting a new job on Monday and refocusing my efforts on continuing to live the best me life I can live. I only hope my classmates are doing the same.

It was a perfectly suburban moment. That's the best way I can think to describe it. Everyone was on the dressy side of a casual night out (with very notable exceptions of a few dudes wearing suits; nice touch), those with kids were explaining that they were with their grandparents for the night, and we all complained about traffic and the crappy parking at the National Harbor. There were awkward "you remember me but I don't remember you but let's hug anyway because we went to LBSS and graduated in 1997 so we're freaking awesome" moments. Seeing a few of the "mean girls" took me back to when they were meaner girls in high school; some things never change. People drank (a lot in some cases) and shouted over the too loud music to catch up on all these little things. They poured over the class photo I brought, trying to find their group in the mass of humanity on the high school bleachers. The names of those no longer with us were discussed in hushed tones and with sadness.

As I looked out onto the crowd, it wasn't a reunion movie that came to mind but the Drew Barrymore movie Never Been Kissed. In the movie, Drew's character goes back to high school at age 25 as an investigative journalist and finds herself reliving her own high school existence. At first, she falls back to being part of the same group she was in the first time around (the brains) and pining for the cutest guy in school. All of the sudden she becomes one of the pretty people, caught up in the magic of being popular and accepted in a way she never was as a teenager. I saw this play out in small moments throughout the night:

• Every single women (and a few of the men) giddy that a certain guy, the one they all got out of bed in the morning for in high school, had come to the reunion and was talking to them. And in some cases, posing for photos with them.
• The pretty girls are still that and they always will be.
• We somehow managed to find our groups again and stayed that way for most of the night. It's like we're hardwired to form cliques even when not in the school building.
• People recreating photos from high school because that's what you're supposed to do at reunions. 
  
• The group singing along to "Bohemian Rhapsody" as God and Freddie Mercury intended.
• Most of the women in my class look exactly the same and we all look freaking amazing. I knew most of them without having to look at name tags.
  
• The men were a different story: facial hair, losing hair, and the decision to dress exactly the opposite of how they did in high school made it challenging to identify them without a name tag. The facial hair ranged from ironic statement beards to ruggedly handsome dude on his way to being an older gentleman to "it didn't work for you in high school and it doesn't work for you now" so all bases were covered.
• To my knowledge, no one in my class is an assassin so there was no random assassination by ballpoint pen at the reunion. I mean, I probably wouldn't know if this happened since that's the point of an assassin but I'm 98% sure it didn't occur.   
• Don't ask dueling piano bar musicians to play a Rage Against the Machine song (I was hoping for "Testify" or "The Battle of Los Angeles."). They won't do it BUT if you're lucky, they'll replace it with your favorite Motley Crue song without being prompted (bonus points if you remember what this song is before I post the video below). This is both weird and awesome.

I'm glad I went and I would encourage others out there to go to their own reunion at least once because it's a good thing to do. Will you love every minute of it? Probably not. Is it worth it to see a few people you never see in person and reminisce about that time when that thing happened that was so great you thought nothing would ever be so great again? Absolutely. Do you have to stay late? Not at all...you're an adult person who can do things so you can leave whenever you want. But go. Remember that time and enjoy it.

Photos by Joey, Katie, and me
Video by me

The 299th Post: 1997 Called. It wants its Doc Martens back.

I graduated from high school in 1997. Of course this means that my 20th reunion is fast approaching. I've never been to a reunion before so I have no idea how reunions actually work. Here's what movies have taught me:

1. The reunion will take place at the high school and have an open bar despite the fact that most high schools have zero tolerance policies.
2. The mean girls will finally get their just desserts (or whatever awkward, old-timey phrase you'd like to use) at the hands of the class weirdos or outcasts who are now wildly successful and amazing. Of course, the weirdos were always amazing and now everyone knows it.
3. The mean girls will also be married to their high school sweethearts and have lots of babies. They're all unhappy and drink lots of chardonnay (white for rich, bored, white women). The husbands are douche-y and will try hard to hook up with a former classmate for no apparent reason.
4. The outcasts/weirdos are single and awesome but at least one of them (maybe more) secretly hopes to reconnect with their crush from high school and run off together. This is despite the fact that the high school crush is an incredibly disappointing human being. And PS, he probably always was.
5. You will be judged for everything even if you're a normal person, living your best life.
6. At some point, a random assassin will follow one of your classmates to the reunion and said classmate will kill the assassin with a ballpoint pen given to him by another classmate who is now a successful banker or real estate agent (or some other profession that your 17 year old self would find depressing). You will help your classmate move the body to the boiler room and then come to terms with the fact that your classmate is also an assassin and drink more to dull the fact you just witnessed someone being murdered by a ballpoint pen. 
7. You'll then realize that your high school has a boiler room and become convinced that Freddy Krueger lives there and you're terrified he will now haunt your dreams. (This did not happen in any movie about a high school reunion; Freddy Krueger will always terrify me.)
8. Hugh Grant will appear because he's actually a washed up pop star in real life now and he'll sing passably amusing songs to classmates while dancing in a way that makes you believe that he's about to break a hip. 
9. If you don't live anywhere near where you went to high school and you've come to town expressly for the reunion, you'll drive around looking at all the things that have changed since you left. Like how your childhood home is now a convenience store that the now dead assassin is about to blow up in an attempt to assassinate you. (This happened prior to his death by ballpoint pen.)
10. At the end of the night, you will lead the entire reunion in a choreographed dance that is flawless and everyone loves you and crowns you Queen/King of the reunion (or whatever title there is) and your high school experience finally makes sense.

 (Guess what movies I really like?)

I didn't grow up in Burke, VA where I attended high school. My family moved to the area when I was in the seventh grade. Lots of my classmates had been in school together since kindergarten but thankfully, this area is where the military and government is so many of classmates were like me and came to Burke at some point during our high school years. I didn't hate high school but I didn't love it either. Most people didn't like high school or if they did, they went to one of those magical high schools where everyone gets along and there are no cliques and the most popular boy in school dates the art girl. The mascot is also a unicorn and everyone has perfect hair. This place does not exist. My high school was big; my graduating class had 600 people in it. I was a theatre kid and I understood how high school worked (thank you John Hughes) so I stuck to my people. My favorite memories from high school involve my theatre family; they were good people then and they're good people now. Through the wonders of Facebook, I keep in touch with many of them. They're leading cool, interesting lives. It makes me happy.

My parents didn't return to Burke when the Army brought them back to Burke before my dad retired. They live about 45 minutes south of Burke now and I live in Arlington so none of us have spent that much time in Burke for the last say, 15 years. All of that changed this summer. My mom injured her ankle pretty severely and is staying at a physical therapy center in Burke. It happens to be directly across from our old neighborhood. I drive past my high school on the way to visit her at least 2-3 times per week. I've spent more time in Burke in the last six weeks thank I have since I graduated from high school. It's weird to be back. It's made weirder still by the fact that the big '17 is up by the football field. It's a constant reminder that I'm old.

Yes, this is the photo of the '97 from my yearbook. Yes, I have my senior yearbook just lying around.

I assume that my extended time in Burke this summer/fall is life's way of reminding me of the passage of time or the good things from my teen years. I've enjoyed dining at all the restaurants we used to go to back in the day. (Reminder: you can only use the phrase "back in the day" if you're over 25.) The owners at Spartans still remember my parents despite the fact they haven't regularly dined there since 1998. It's comforting in some ways. Some things change but just as many stay exactly the same.

My high school looks much like it did when I went there, at least from the outside. In addition to the senior class year sign, the bruin is still greeting everyone. I assume he's only made of paint now, layers and layers of paint. The LBT sign is there too. That sign went up during my tenure as theater Business Manager. I spent many an afternoon putting up the sign and organizing the letters. We never seemed to have enough of certain letters like "I" and "R." Anytime I see the guy changing the movies at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse, I think back to my sign days and feel a little bad for him.

A few weeks ago I was at a concert (Cheap Trick, Joan Jett & Heart - Joan Jett was terrible, the other two rocked it) with Anita, one of my friends from high school. Actually, Anita was one of my first friends when I started at our school in seventh grade. Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to be added to the 20th reunion Facebook page. Apparently, that's how reunions are organized now. I told her to add me to the group. So far the only suggestion that I hope doesn't happen is that the reunion has the same theme as our prom. The theme was "In Your Wildest Dreams." (I had to look it up; I didn't just know that.) Why was our prom theme a Moody Blues song? It was 1997; we couldn't have come up with anything else? Maybe a better theme would be "My Mom Threw Away My Doc Martens & Other Things That Make Me Long for 1997." It's more realistic and probably more in line with what most of us feel about our high school years. My mom may have thrown away my Doc Martens; this is a point of contention between us and has been since 1998. She thinks I took them to college with me and someone either borrowed them or I lost them. I'm not sure how one loses shoes but this is probably an argument I will never win.

Anyway, I think we should skip repeating our prom theme and make the reunion exactly like what I did for Homecoming that year. Instead of going to the dance, my friends and I decided to dress up (in Homecoming appropriate dresses) and go bowling. Yep, we went to dinner first and then went to Bowl America. After bowling we ended up at one of our houses to watch movies. I believe they were Molly Ringwald movies but my memory isn't that great. That sounds like a super fun reunion to me. We can all get dressed, no one needs to wear uncomfortable shoes, and it's so much fun. Bowling also involves alcohol, junk food, and the possibly of making poor life choices - everything a reunion needs.

Get planning, reunion committee. There's a reunion committee right? 

You're welcome.