My High School Reunion

I’m officially old.

I have a friend/friend’s daughter who comes to watch Issa once a week so I can get some uninterrupted work hours in. I told her I’d be heading to my 10 year high school reunion and she said she didn’t believe me. Thanks for that Holly. Your disbelief in my elderly reality was quite sweet.

To be honest I was a tad nervous. Most of the friends I had in high school, the ones I hung out with outside of school, I had completely lost touch with. Some bridges had been burned (though I don’t feel like I lit the fires). The people I still have some sort of contact with from high school were strictly Facebook relationships, good Facebook relationships, the kind where Facebook actually shows you their status updates on your news feed because you have at least mild interaction with them within the social network space. But still, nothing in person. Others, I know what’s happening in their lives from late night Facebook creeping (come on, we all do it) or reading their blogs.

I also have post pregnancy body. If you’re that woman who had a baby and who’s body bounced right back (or at least it looks like it did), high five to you. I am not that woman. So there’s that.

But even with the slight nervousness, I never considered not going. Bill was going with me so I was guaranteed at least one person to talk to.

Quite honestly, I had a blast.

You see I went to an art high school. If you’ve ever seen the movie Fame, yeah that was pretty much high school for me. There were no jocks, no cheerleaders, no slushies. There were just artists, in one of five art areas: visual art (which I was part of), vocal, instrumental music, theater, or dance. You did your art area and people respected you for it, and the talent was incredible.

It was interesting to see how some people had changed and some were exactly the same. I was pleasantly surprised at how many folks were pursuing a career in their perspective art areas. Many are in LA and NYC doing the acting thing. It was encouraging and inspiring to hear about people following their dreams and succeeding. It made me proud of who we were and who we are becoming.

What was also interesting to me was how few people have children. From what I could tell I was one of three people with kids. So many friends my age who went to “normal” high schools are bursting with children. My marketing brain wants to run studies on the demographics of art high school kids and figure out why. My mommy brain is just proud that I made a kid with a man I love, that I got to show her off a little bit and people think she’s cute.

Lastly what made the night ever so fantastic was I was amongst adults for many consecutive hours without the worry of if Issa was hungry, wet, bored, hot, screaming and disrupting people, etc. God bless our volunteer babysitter. We didn’t get home until 2am, we went to the after party, we felt free and young. And then the next morning we felt tired and old.

I’m so thankful I got to catch up with everyone who came to the reunion. If you read this, thank you for being there. Thank you to the team of folks that made the whole thing happen, you deserve trophies with tiny plastic figurines on top. Thank you to Bill for being a trooper and hanging out in a group of people you didn’t know and for sharing in the experience and in a little of my history.

And lastly thank you to Elissa for having the forethought to create a photo booth. If you hadn’t I would not have this excellent photo.

Here’s to the next 10 years!