(stolen from the Foo Fighters - but I digress)
I skipped my 35 year high school reunion this weekend. Yes, I said THIRTY FIVE year reunion....so I'm old - its not like you didn't already know that - let's move on.
Why didn't I attend?
First off - it was a dinner dance which generally sucks for me without a partner because dancing in a group of women while the men look on isn't cute after a certain age - it becomes creepily like a strip club only without dollar bills being tucked into your bra, doncha think?
And, it was on a Friday night - which made me think that few folks from out of town were going to be able to attend......and lets face it - those are the ones I'd want to see - I run into the local folk occasionally and we'd probably already be hanging out on a semi-regular basis if we were "friends".
The last reunion I went to was my 25th - I went to the "informal get together" which was held, if memory serves, the night before the dinner dance - had pleasant conversations catching up with a few people I hadn't seen since the 15 year event, and finished up by having a private reunion with an old friend.......and I'll just smile and leave it at that.
Even though people seem to remember me as much more interesting and cool than I was....I still don't enjoy reliving the past. I prefer to reinvent myself every decade or so......and what I"m working on for my 50s will get its own blog at some point, I promise.
OK - so I didn't go....
However, thanks to the brilliance of Mark Zuckerberg (Happy Yom Kippur by the way), my graduating class has a Facebook page that's sharing lots of pictures of the event.
And you know what - I don't recognize most of the faces - and the ones that I do think I might know look either really old or impossibly young - like I married (or became) a plastic surgeon/personal trainer- young. This was such a shock to me that I mentioned it at aerobics class - how did these people get so old? And of course my friends laughed because they are much too polite to point out that I am old as well.
It took me a bit to figure out why I was so shocked. Its not that I am unrealistic about aging, honest. I know I look a lot older than I did in high school - even a lot older than I did in my 30s - unless we have incredibly good genes and ridiculous willpower to avoid all the fun stuff in life that ages us - we are going to get and look older.
The shock came because I haven't had any contact with these people for a very long time - so my frame of reference and expectations are skewed. Classmates that I socialize with either in person or through Facebook may have changed in appearance every bit as much over 35 years, but its been gradual and so really not noticeable.
Or maybe its just that my friends don't age like other people - they still all look amazing no matter what their birth certificates say.
And yes, I'm talking about you ;).....
I skipped my 35 year high school reunion this weekend. Yes, I said THIRTY FIVE year reunion....so I'm old - its not like you didn't already know that - let's move on.
Why didn't I attend?
First off - it was a dinner dance which generally sucks for me without a partner because dancing in a group of women while the men look on isn't cute after a certain age - it becomes creepily like a strip club only without dollar bills being tucked into your bra, doncha think?
And, it was on a Friday night - which made me think that few folks from out of town were going to be able to attend......and lets face it - those are the ones I'd want to see - I run into the local folk occasionally and we'd probably already be hanging out on a semi-regular basis if we were "friends".
The last reunion I went to was my 25th - I went to the "informal get together" which was held, if memory serves, the night before the dinner dance - had pleasant conversations catching up with a few people I hadn't seen since the 15 year event, and finished up by having a private reunion with an old friend.......and I'll just smile and leave it at that.
Even though people seem to remember me as much more interesting and cool than I was....I still don't enjoy reliving the past. I prefer to reinvent myself every decade or so......and what I"m working on for my 50s will get its own blog at some point, I promise.
OK - so I didn't go....
However, thanks to the brilliance of Mark Zuckerberg (Happy Yom Kippur by the way), my graduating class has a Facebook page that's sharing lots of pictures of the event.
And you know what - I don't recognize most of the faces - and the ones that I do think I might know look either really old or impossibly young - like I married (or became) a plastic surgeon/personal trainer- young. This was such a shock to me that I mentioned it at aerobics class - how did these people get so old? And of course my friends laughed because they are much too polite to point out that I am old as well.
It took me a bit to figure out why I was so shocked. Its not that I am unrealistic about aging, honest. I know I look a lot older than I did in high school - even a lot older than I did in my 30s - unless we have incredibly good genes and ridiculous willpower to avoid all the fun stuff in life that ages us - we are going to get and look older.
The shock came because I haven't had any contact with these people for a very long time - so my frame of reference and expectations are skewed. Classmates that I socialize with either in person or through Facebook may have changed in appearance every bit as much over 35 years, but its been gradual and so really not noticeable.
Or maybe its just that my friends don't age like other people - they still all look amazing no matter what their birth certificates say.
And yes, I'm talking about you ;).....
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