Senior Class of 1974 – 40 Year Reunion
I’m going to make a huge assumption. Everyone’s class reunions are the same. You
should also make a huge assumption.
Nearly everything I write is guaranteed to offend someone. For that reason, I’m blogging about my 40
year high school reunion without naming the town or the school. Obviously I had to use some names, but they
have all been changed. Below is all you
really need to know.
Small town in Texas.
High school football. Bowling
alley. County fair. Homecoming parade. Everyone knows everyone. Or do they?
I attended the reunion this past weekend, partly
because there were some people I wanted to see, but mainly because the last
time I missed a reunion, a very inappropriate incident occurred which would
have been writing gold if I had witnessed it.
So, hoping for some more writing gold, I planned to lose weight and
impress everyone with how good I look.
That lasted as a brief thought in my head for about six months until the
first day of the reunion when I tore up my closet and shrieked, “Why don’t I
ever have anything that fits?” The
answer will be in the following quiz:
WHY DOESN’T KAT HAVE ANYTHING THAT FITS?
a)
The only clothes she ever wears are her uniform
or her Looney Tunes pajama bottoms and any t-shirt that is reasonably clean;
b)
She loses weight in the winter because she
walks and gains weight in the summer because sweat, sunstroke, heat exhaustion
and thigh rashes are her least favorite things.
This is fall. You do the math. (Technically, no math is involved in this
answer.)
c)
She
hates shopping and is so low-maintenance that she’s never even bothered to fill
out a trophy wife application;
d)
All of the above.
Eventually I put on
some pants and not wishing to cause a scene, also a t-shirt.
DAY
ONE – HOMECOMING PARADE FLOAT
The alumni in charge of
the reunion picked the theme STILL ROCKING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. We were informed we could come as rock stars
or sit in rocking chairs. Ouch! It’s so sad to think that our rock star years
might be over.
When Eunice and I got
to the start of the parade route, we wandered aimlessly looking for our
float. We weren’t too surprised it
didn’t seem to be there because back in 1974 we voted ourselves the Most
Apathetic Class in our high school’s history.
While wandering, she was almost hit by a car. If I had seen this in time, I would have
jumped in front of her and been hit…not to save her life, but to get out of
work for the holidays. Retail Workers
Nationwide Holiday Slogan – HO! HO! HO!
Get Your Shit and Go!
Then we saw the best
thing ever! A male high school student
dressed as the Incredibles baby. A
diaper was pulled up over the costume.
He stood with his mother and naturally I said to him, “You look like
you just dropped a load in that thing.”
He turned red and his
mother said, “He’ll be alright when his friends get here. We later saw him with another group of kids
and not one of them was wearing a costume.
He got punked.
Eventually our float
arrived and as Eunice feared, we were to be sitting on hay bales. Chiggers are no joke, people. But we stole someone’s towel and the only
casualty I personally suffered was a piece of hay up my arse. Don’t ask me how that happened. If you recall, I told you I put on pants.
The next hurdle was
getting on the float. The 40th
reunion means nobody’s knees work anymore.
The organizers/float builders kindly brought a step ladder, which
probably worked for everyone who doesn’t have a paralyzing fear of
ladders. I did make it onto the float
and while idly looking at the kids in ROTC across the street, Eunice delivered
the best line of the entire reunion. “This is Texas. Where’s
the NRA float?”
I spent a lot of time
whispering in Eunice’s ear, “Who is that?”
There were so many people I didn’t recognize. They shouldn’t be offended though. I’m almost convinced I have the cognitive
disorder, prosopagnosia, aka face blindness.
At work I memorize my customers’ shirts to recognize them after a
fruitless search for whatever book they want.
Or, it could be that I spent the four years of high school never looking
anyone in the eye, so I never knew what they looked like in the first place.
Moving on…
Our float did
rock. The classic rock from the 70s
blared out (not loudly enough according to Eunice) and small children along the
parade route got their first taste of Smoking
in the Boys Room. Star Child insisted
I stand next to her and dance. I lost my
rhythm about the same time I lost my virginity, so that was the town’s
pre-Halloween horror show. Max and Robin
were dressed as hippie chicks and they looked great! Robin played a fake guitar and Max constantly
banged on a tambourine and wouldn’t stop even though I told her she had no
rhythm whatsoever. She just
laughed. On the other side of the float,
Thor wore a letter jacket, had a real guitar and rocked out. Adele had her face painted like a member of
KISS. I never liked them…I’m more of a
Doobie Brothers kind of girl. Jack ran
alongside the float for the longest time and seemed to do so with ease, but I
spent the time trying to remember CPR.
Just in case.
When we got to the end
of the parade route, Jack had to help us off the float. You could almost hear bones snapping. That’s when I got the hay in my arse.
DAY
TWO – HOMECOMING FOOTBALL GAME
The funniest thing that
happened was the pre-game announcements.
“We’d like to welcome the Class of 1964!
And 1994! And 2004!” What’s the Class of 1974? Chopped liver? Probably not since this is Texas and not
Miami. We all thought the omission was funny.
What wasn’t funny, at
least to me, was the football game.
Unless I’m in high school or my daughter is in high school (both events
occurring 40 and 17 years ago) I have zero interest in watching a football
game. Eunice, Angelo (graduated two
years after us) and I planned to leave at halftime. But you know how these games drag out. I watched the clock like a factory worker
with an appointment at a local bar. Our
team fumbled or threw an interception or something and everyone in the home
team side of the stands groaned, OHHHHHHH!”
I did the same thing, but only because the play stopped the clock with
four seconds to go. We ran into Star
Child and Shep on the way out of the stadium.
They’d been drinking somewhere and whatever I babbled to him seemed to
confuse him.
DAY
3 – MAIN EVENT
Let the serious
drinking begin!
I’m certain every
senior class since the beginning of senior classes drank…a lot! In 1974 throw in some weed and it’s amazing
any of us got a diploma instead of a prison sentence. But we had fun back then. And we had fun at the main event. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see one
another and it was great to catch up and remember the good old days when the
women could get away with wearing halter tops, everyone’s hair was long and it
took more than three Miller Lites to get me drunk.
My favorite part of the
evening was when I asked Frankie Goes to Hollywood (in front of Rocky) if he
remembered he told everyone I was a slut (that came later in college…in high
school I graduated a virgin) and that I cussed him out in front of the school
library with a bunch of students cheering me on. He was horrified and said he didn’t remember
that and apologized. He was so
sweet. A few minutes later I looked on a
table containing name tags of those who planned to attend, but didn’t show
up. I discovered my senility had ramped
up a notch. It was really Devlin who
called me a slut. I explained my faux
pas to Rocky and informed him I had to tell Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Rocky begged me not to, but I cannot tell a
lie unless a lie will put vast amounts of money in my bank account, so I did
confess my stupidity. I’m sure Frankie
Goes to Hollywood would have felt relief knowing he wasn’t a douchebag in high
school if he wasn’t so drunk. I doubt he
remembers he went to this class reunion.
I was happy to see him and did go on YouTube to watch his band
play. Fun.
Unless I counted wrong,
thirteen members of the Class of ’74 have passed away. That makes me sad. Wish you were still rocking with us, guys.
When the party ended,
most of us went to a local bar to visit some more. We all left before midnight, demonstrating
that while we may still be rocking after all these years, we’re not rocking
quite as hard.
Thanks to all my
classmates who worked so hard to put this 40 year reunion together. You know
who you are and you did a fantastic job!
Answer to the Quiz – D)
All of the above
To be continued at the
next reunion…
