20 years

I’m less than 24 hours from being the train wreck at my 20-year high school reunion. Dude. 20 years.

Well, not the school-sanctioned reunion. Yeah, the school had to cancel the official reunion due to lack of response. People must not have known I was going. So some of us just decided – let’s go to our fellow alum’s bar! This might actually pan out to be the perfect high school reunion setting. And lack of people means lack of judgment!

I really hate to get all dolled up. It takes a lot of effort. I’m just not a skirt girl. And whenever I wear dress pants, I have to unbutton my waistband on the car ride home because I overstuffed my gullet. Yes that’s right, I’m the one you’ll find hovering by the hors d’oeuvres table all night. Test: While standing, try holding a plate in one hand and a glass in the other and then actually try to eat the stuff off your plate. Doesn’t work. So I just stand by the table and put my pint glass down and start shoveling in.

I had a trial run last summer for my husband’s reunion. And despite the fact that I wore a dress, it was pretty fun. I guess I clean up ok, but it must be an odd sight. A dressed up, beer guzzling, foul-mouthed girl with food packed in her cheeks like a chipmunk. But once we moved from the reunion to a bar it went well. It was dark and loud, so people couldn’t really see or hear me. They pretty much thought I turned out ok.

So a bar is the perfectly relaxed opportunity for me to just go “as myself”. You know…Jeans. Roots. Talking like a truck driver. I mean what’s the thought behind getting all gussied up and being on your best behavior to prove that you’ve become “someone” to people that you hung out with when you were barely anyone? I wasn’t even a fully formed person back then. I mean…I couldn’t get much worse.

And due to the darkly lit location, I may also have dodged the necessity to color my hair because I’m looking a little bit trailer trash (no offense to those of you that live in trailers [mom and dad]).

By the way, I’m not bringing my husband. I don’t want anyone to think that I “married up”. Which I did. And since I met him in high school, I wouldn’t want to subject him to the sort of pity that he’ll no doubt receive for ending up with me.

Mostly, I just didn’t know who I was back then. And today, I know who I am. I’m happy. I’ve got a great family. I work on projects that I believe in. But I also like to swear. I like to eat bite sized high calorie fatty foods in quick succession. I like to imbibe gassy beverages. And so hopefully we’re going to skip the judgments and just have fun.