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I had this dream about my high-school reunion. Dressed in a mysterious-looking black Hugo Boss suit, I casually load a small plate with a polite amount of chilled shrimp and gouda cheese, grip my fingers around a glass of chardonnay and approach a table where a woman, who I once had an unrequited crush on, stares smokily at me as she nearly falls out of her spaghetti-strap minidress. As I get ready to sit down, she shoots her hand on the seat and snaps, "Saved!" Than a prematurely graying former football star, the one who was called "sophomore's best friend" for deflowe-ring half that class, males included, with a light shove sends me careening into an ice sculpture.
Maybe it was seeing that my class reunion was going to be held at someplace called a Horse Patrol that first gave me second thoughts about going. (My dad has a barn! Let's put on a reunion!) To go hang out with Sea Biscuit plus up to 650 members of Carmel's class of 1986, it would cost $35 per head. According to the RSVP form, that was because the class got only $300 from the school for the reunion. For that price, we could take everybody to White Castle and keep the change. The smell would be about the same as the Horse Patrol.
My main reason for going would have been to see who has gone bald. A 10-year reunion is the perfect time to catch men highly sensitive to their thinning hair. I wondered if they would wear hats like the Edge does to signify they're bald. If I was lucky, our class would have a vote on baldness, which apparently happened at one guy's school. In a commercial for hair transplants, he said he signed up immediately after his class voted him "most bald." I understand his class also had votes for "most zit-induced pockmarks," "saggiest breasts" and "most likely to die of a heart attack by age 35." That guy had a very cruel class.
I also wondered if our class had any budding software millionaires in it. The beauty of computers is that they turn reunions into the geek's revenge that only '80s-era T & A movies dreamed of. I believe Bill Gates, instead of showing up at his reunions, beams himself in on the same 100-foot screen he used during the initial MSNBC news conference. He probably hires a few beautiful women to rub his shoulders while he speaks. The geek's motto: Wedgies today, tomorrow the world!
Before I could consider going, I had to fill out a short but pointed questionnaire prepared by members of the "reunion conunittee." The committee included the former student body president, the captain of the track team and the head cheerleader (who has a deep, dark secret - sometimes she faked spirit). They said they needed the information for a "fabulous keepsake booklet" that was "not available in stores" but only "through this special TV offer." It was trimmed in Corinthian leather. Very nice.
In the end, I decided against going to my 10-year reunion. I fugure that, like my father, I'll wait until it gets to about 35 years. That way, you can find out how everybody really turns out, rather than listening to mildly successful real estate agents brag about how they're moving up to partner or something like that after the sale closing in a week. One guy in my Dad's class couldn't make it to the reunion, since the North Carolina penal system had disposed of him about 20 years earlier. I hope the "reunion committee" understood why he didn't fill out his where-are-they-now form.