25 Years Already

I received an interesting postcard in the mail yesterday – an invitation to attend my 25 year high school reunion.

Wow – has it really been 25 years since I walked away from that place? I guess it has. (Well, almost. Graduation was on June 9, 1983. I remember this because that date was also my sister's 16th birthday, and she's probably still bitter that my completing high school interfered with her sweet sixteen.)

Being Seattle and all, where there's a whole lot of high schools to deal with (and not enough auditoriums to go around), we were one of 3 high schools to graduate in the Seattle Center Arena that night. (The Arena was the usual home to the local WHL hockey team, so the ice was covered with plywood and folding chairs, and we sat out there in our caps and gowns and shivered.)

Anyway, time was precious – there were 3 schools to pump through in one night, remember? My school graduated at 5:30, followed by Cleveland High at 7:00, and then Roosevelt High at 8:30. Time's a-wastin', kids – don't dawdle.

We lined up, they played "Pump & Circumcision" (as us crude teenage boys called it), we marched in, the class President said something none of us remembered 10 minutes later, ditto the special guest speaker – some dork from the school district – and then they passed out phony diplomas to the 202 of us who managed to finish four years at Rainier Beach (the fact that a few of the graduates there had actually done 5, 6, or more years aside).

They wrapped it up by playing "The Best of Times" by Styx while a cheesy slideshow ran, and bam – we were outta there in a record 63 minutes, making way for Cleveland.

And that was that.

It was also the last time I ever saw most of my fellow classmates.

We all went our separate ways – I was in college two weeks later, taking summer classes. Some people went off to college, some went to work, a few went off to the military, and a couple went off to the King County Correctional Facility.

I really wasn't that close with many people in my graduating class. My two good friends were both younger than me, and the ones that I did hang out with that were in my class were gone almost as fast I was. Of my 201 classmates I've probably seen and/or run into maybe 6 or 7 of them in the last 25 years, and none within the last 11. (One was at our wedding in 1997, but he is/was a drunken ass, so I didn't talk to him much.)

It's never really bothered me that I haven't kept in touch with these people, and I've never had any real urge to attend a class reunion. We didn't have a 5 year, 10 year, or 15 year reunion, so that was simple enough to avoid, and the 20 year was a potluck picnic in a park. Being 1,800 miles away made for a convenient excuse to not attend, so I politely bagged out.

Now here we are, 5 years later. This time around the party is at some fancy downtown Seattle nightclub – tickets are $75 each, and private party rooms are available for an extra cost. Great – it's the cliques separated into private groups all over again. It'll be drinking, smoking, and segregating into little cliques, just like olden times. Yeah, that sounds like a fun time all around.

Gee, can you guess I'm not going this time, either?

Distance, lack of time, not wanting to hang out with those people… they're all perfectly good excuses miss it. I'll stick with those – that's enough. Instead, I’ll save my money and go to the next Disney trivia reunion. Those are people I like.

Still, there are a few people I've wondered about. And I wonder how many of those people are curious about what became of ol' Tommy. But I'll just let this remain one of life's sweetest mysteries.

Besides, I'm all over the Internet. I'm sure they could track me down if they want to. Google is a powerful tool.

So good luck & best wishes to the Class of 83 – I'll be there in memories, and if you promise to play "The Best of Times" again, maybe I'll be there in spirit as well.