Welcome home

I blew off my 10-year high school class reunion. Didn’t regret it until my mama sent me the write-up, complete with a picture, from our hometown weekly. I took it over to show my best friend from home who was living on Morgan Street. Her roommate saw it and asked, “Who are all the old people?”

Tonya and I were still single and living it up. “We should have gone!” I told her, “We still look good!”

Ten years later, I got an e-mail from our class valedictorian with plans for 20th reunion festivities. Classmates were invited to tailgate at Friday night’s homecoming game, and Saturday night's main activity was a catered dinner (no mention of alcohol) at a golf club, described as an event for classmates and spouses, with a footnote saying, "We realize child-care problems may arise. Please advise if you need to bring your children."

I wrote this to my two girlfriends from school:

"Is there a tasteful way to ask for the number of ‘bringing children’ responses before replying to attend the dinner event on Saturday?”

After a good deal of debate, my friend April and I decided to go. We had, after all, grown up in a small town where everyone had gone to school together from kindergarten through graduation.

I sent in a check the month before, and the reality set in. There was no way I could lose 20 marriage pounds. What if I ran into the boy I’d been crushed out on since third grade, after my mother ran into him five years ago and he asked how I was doing, and she told him I'd been in love with him all those years?

On the three-hour drive down, I was a nervous wreck. When we blew into town, we stopped at my favorite Scotchman convenience store to stock up on adult beverages.

We got up to the counter and I gave the clerk my card. As I waited for it to go through, I admired an impulse-purchase rack of Halloween novelties. I picked up a severed ear and realized upon touching it that it was made of that slimy, floppy, rubbery stuff little kids like to play with. I screamed, "OH MY GOD, IT'S GROSS!"

Beside it was a severed tongue. I picked it up and spun around to Steve and said, "Look, I'm Gene Simmons!" It was then that I saw the five people lined up behind us and became embarrassed. I turned too quickly to put the tongue back on the rack and in the process knocked a bunch of things off it and onto the floor. I ducked down to pick them up and put them back and even more stuff fell off. I shrieked, "It's getting worse!"

At that point, Steve announced to those waiting behind us, "I'm sorry about my wife." Then he crouched down and told me to sign the receipt while he picked everything up and put it back.

April met up with us at my parents’ house. They were out of town, leaving us alone there for the first time ever. She was even more freaked out than I was, and we were talking a million miles an hour, fussing over our appearances and pacing the carport (no smoking in the house). “We’re really doing this,” we assured each other as we had our personality drinks.

We really did it. And we really loved it. We spent two hours hugging people we hadn’t seen in 20 years, shrieking in surprise and lying, “You look just like you did in high school!”

Even my darling husband, who comes from a land without proms, yearbooks or reunions enjoyed himself. It was a sociological experience for him, observing me slip effortlessly back into my native accent of flattened-out vowels and unenunciated diphthongs. Plus, he got to feel like a rock star when classmate after classmate told him how much they loved his English accent.

I’m so glad I went, and I was a little sad leaving the next day. We stopped at the Scotchman to gas up the car. The same clerk was working. The novelty rack had been moved.