10 LONG years

Saturday was my 10 Year High School Reunion, and despite all my fears, went VERY well. It was so ‘neat’ (for lack of a better word) to see how everyone ‘grew up’… I put that in quotations because not EVERYONE grew up. At one point when I was walking to the bathroom I overheard one girl to a group of people say ‘They asked me to wear a nametag and I was like, if they don’t know my name, they don't NEED to know my name”. I almost burst out laughing. But other than that one experience, there really was no cliques, no segregation, no one traumatizing the ‘geeks’, and no one judging anyone. I saw a mixture of people socializing with each other, groups that never hung out with each other in high school sharing tables and laughter. I saw wallets being opened with proud bursting faces as they showed pictures of their kids. I saw many at the bar pounding back shots and clinking their glasses in salute (I was one of them!) and I saw so many people just walking around from person to person hugging, laughing, and sharing stories.

Not everything went swimmingly though, and we will be filing a complaint with the pub for their behavior. During the planning process we were quoted $19 per ticket, and we charged $20 (as did the pub when taking orders over the phone) in case of extra costs accrued from people showing up and not paying etc. When we were given the bill, the owner of the pub did not take off much of the money she received from over-the-phone sales, even going as far to say that some people never paid (we will be showing her credit card receipts when bills come in the mail) and she charged $19.99 per person instead of the agreed upon $19 (which in retrospect should have been ok since we charged that much but they wouldn’t have received much of a tip!) so many people had to dig into their own pockets to pay the remainder of the bill, while the owner hid in the back of the pub and refused to come out and talk to us. We heard from several staff members that this has happened before. Interesting piece of information that we would have liked to know beforehand. Not only was this an issue, but she cut off our comedian half way through for ‘swearing’. First, no one could hear him anyways because their speaker system was a mess, secondly every song played throughout the night had some form of swearing in it, so why does it matter that he was doing it live? Thirdly, he was a LTSS 1997 grad and deserved to be putting on a show. We provided them with over 140 alcohol purchasing patrons, and all we got was a big FUCK YOU from the owner.

Despite the behavior of the establishment, the night was awesome. I was so happy to see my best friends from high school and plan on keeping touch with all of them. Makes you wonder how you fell out of touch to begin with, no?