Ramblings 2008
Posted on | August 3, 2008 at 4:32 pm | 4 Comments
Movie Review Sunday!
I haven’t seen any movies this week.
I guess I should write about the 30th High School Reunion, which concluded last night with the dinner/dance. But there isn’t much to report. Even fewer people showed up for that than the mixer on Friday night. We had almost 500 people in our graduating class, and according to the “Memory Book”, over 300 of them still live in Colorado. I suspect around 100-200 still live in the same general area as the high school (I’m one of them), though I haven’t tallied that up. At the dinner last night, there were probably less than 75-100 people, not counting the spouses/partners. And many of them came in from out of state! Where were all the local people? Okay, I’m sure some of them had other commitments (like 80th birthday parties for the mother-in-law) and some just didn’t want to pay (~$100 per person). And I’m sure there were a lot of people who just had no interest at all in reliving those high school days. I’d probably be one of those if I hadn’t kept in contact with a lot of my friends from those days over the years. But it sure seems like if you’re local, you might as well pony up the money and check things out just for something to do. $100 is better than paying for plane/gas and hotel fare.
What I really don’t understand is the people who paid and didn’t show up. I do understand how some people who showed up the first night and embarrassed themselves might not have wanted to show up the second night, although it might’ve been a good chance to make amends and show you’re not quite as crazy when sober. But I’m pretty sure, as verified by name tags that were never picked up, that there were people who paid and didn’t show up on either night. More people than can be explained by emergency conflicts.
I was disappointed that a lot of people I was really hoping to see were no-shows, though I am glad I got to spend some time with good friends that I don’t see much of these days, including Vic, who flew in from Texas just for the reunion. It was worth it just to spend some time with him. But there were so, so many people that I wanted to see who didn’t show. I suppose I could’ve done more mingling with the people whom I didn’t mingle with in high school, but most of them were busy mingling with their own crowds. Yes, those divisions still stand 30 years later, although I think our high school was maybe a tad less cliquish at the time than some.
As always, it’s interesting seeing how people have changed, appearance-wise. Although at this age, most of the guys start looking way too much like each other. There will always be the people who age better than others, including the ones who look much younger than their age and are there to flaunt it.
There was pretty much zero dancing going on, and the DJ looked bored/disgusted. This was the first reunion that my girlfriend has attended, and she was underwhelmed. The 5th, 10th and 20th reunions were certainly better attended and more fun. I guess as people age, there just isn’t as much interest in renewing those old contacts. Pity.
But I’ll still probably go to the 40th.
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “what happened to the queso crunchwrap?”.
Comments
4 Responses to “Ramblings 2008”
August 3rd, 2008 @ 4:38 pm
Maybe some of them lead secret double lives as super(heroes|villains)…? Were there any unusual emergencies that night in the greater metro area?
August 3rd, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
I went to my 25th and out of a class of one thousand, about fifty showed up. Really pathetic turn-out.
August 5th, 2008 @ 9:23 am
I still live in the area but have never been to a reunion. Most of the country-club-kids I went to school with were born on 3rd base and thought they hit a triple. I’d rather go downtown and hang out with the winos at Lawson Field.
August 15th, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
Well, our internal research shows that interest peaks about age 38, which would be the 20th reunion. The other thing I’ve noticed in my college alumni magazine is that the people in the classes around ours just don’t seem that involved.
Glad you got to see Vic, though.