The 20 Year Itch pt 2: Merch

So, yesterday I logged on to Facebook, minding my own business, when I came across a post from a Toni, a woman that went to high school with me. She's on the planning committee for our 20-year reunion. She did a post to let us know that the Target closest to our old high school sells the high school's merchandise, and we would also be able to purchase high school merch (t-shirts, hoodies, etc.), at the reunion! Yay! 

I stared at this post blankly for like five minutes. It astounds me how different other people's high school experience was from mine. When I think of high school, I think of bullying and being immensely unhappy. I think of how this high school was one of the last ones in Georgia to take down the Confederate Flag from the flapping proudly in its lawn...I think. Well, I assume it's down now. Back in the 99s and 2000s when I was there, the parents had voted to keep it. Can you imagine being 15 and Black trying to explain to a 55-year-old White teacher why the Confederate Flag is problematic?! There are no memories from this place that make me want to put on a tank top with the high school's mascot plastered on it, believe me. 

Oddly enough, Toni had reached out to me a few weeks earlier via Facebook message, asking me directly if I was coming to the reunion. She and the committee were trying to figure out how much food to get and what venue to book. Toni was always cool with me. We were in remedial math together. But my instinct to reading that message, which was very sweet by the way, was to tell her to kiss my ass! I wanted to ask her why she was so eager to celebrate this nightmare? Could my poor Black experience had been that much different than her middle class Asian one? I guess so. If it had not been, she would have known to not even waste her time reaching out to me at all. 

Merch. Incredible! 

Oh, and I didn't tell you the best part: Bradley Barker is on the committee too! This for me is truly unbelievable. Bradley was then what he is now: a fat, Anime-loving, horribly dressed weirdo. This boy was made fun of so badly for being himself that I used to wonder if the student body was in cahoots to make him lose his mind! He was socially rejected and lost every SGA office race you could possibly run for! I should know, I was his campaign manager for his race for Regional President of a club we were in together. I guess 20 years has erased these memories for him, because he is now posting on social media posting about reunion ticket sales. What?! The boy had been so hurt about losing the Regional President race that he literally cried in my lap! 

I can't wait until the reunion goes down so that the publicizing for it will end and I can stop being traumatized whenever I go online. I try to pretend like high school didn't happen, and I'm eager to do that for the next 20 years. 

The 20 Year Itch

 As a senior in high school, I made a lot of promises to myself. I promised myself that I would be famous and an award-winning writer/editor. I promised myself that I would get skinny and marry a hot guy. I promised that my life would be full of adventure. If you know me, you know that none of these have happened. But I also promised that I would never return to my high school, and that is one promise that I plan to keep to myself. My 20-year reunion is coming up, and I absolutely have no intention of attending. 

I. Hated. High. School. And when I log in to Facebook and see updates from the reunion group and see that people are actually excited to go to the reunion, I am in disbelief. I can't believe that sat in classes with people who were having such a dramatically different experience than me! Although the reunion will not be taking place at my old high school, returning to be in the same space with my old peers would be the equivalent of returning to the scene of a crime. I am simply not here for the drama or the inevitable trauma. Maybe by my 30th year, I will be healed enough to go and peek my head in the door but not today Satan. Too soon. 

#oldladyproblems

My friend Cali from college is so drastically different from me that I can't believe that we are friends. I try to lean on the apprehensive side of life, and she went through college swinging from the chandeliers...and from boys. This is why I was surprised to hear that she had some of the same anxieties as me in regards to our upcoming college reunion.
"I don't really do crowds like that," she said. "It's going to be crowded."
I had just been thinking the same thing earlier that day.
We attended college in New Orleans, so naturally, much of our spare time was spent on Bourbon Street. For those of you who don't know what Bourbon Street is like, it is essentially a claustrophobic hot box from hell lined with bars, dance halls, and strip clubs. At 22, I could literally stay on Bourbon Street all night. At 32, the idea of going down there at its least crowded hour for lunch makes me want to hide under the bed.
We can now add a fear of crowds to my ever-growing list of #oldladyproblems.
Something happens after you turn 30. I call it IDon'tWantToness. Others would call it becoming more cautious or knowing better what you want. For me, it just boils down to things that I don't want to do.
For instance, I no longer desire to wear shoes. My feet have to breathe! I have shoes, of course, but I often look them over for a cheap, raggedy, worn-in pair of blue men's flip-flops that I got from Walgreen's.
I also try to limit the time I am going to spend places, like movie theaters and malls, where I know that there are going to be teens. I find that socially, they are just too much to deal with, so I'd rather go see a movie at 9am while they are in school to ensure that I will not run into one. I know that that sounds horrible, but the reward in waking up that early is not having to deal with their unruly behavior and crazy clothes.
In college, I also wore many an outfit that was uncomfortable so that I could look cute. Today, I would rather be comfortable than cute, even if that means wearing the hugest, ugliest house dress to the grocery store that you have ever seen. I hate standing in lines. I hate standing period. I need advance notice to mentally prepare to go out with friends. I NEED naps. This is non-negotiable.
The trick to having #oldladyproblems is not allowing them to make you a recluse who no longer cares about her appearance. I'm working on it.

10 Year Fears

I didn't go to my 10-year high school reunion. I ended up going to a high school outside of my district, gay boyfriend in toe, for a fresh start. What I got instead was a fresh hell. I won't go into too many deats. Let's just say it was horrible.

On the flip side, I had the time of my life in college. It was how I had wished that high school had been! I had fun. I was social. I had friends. People knew who I was. Yet, my 10-year reunion is later on this year, and I don't think that I will be going to that one either.

Thanks to the soul-imprisoning social network that is Facebook, you no longer need a reunion to keep up with your compadres. A large amount of my time in the morning is dedicated to going through my Facebook timeline and liking advance degree announcements, manicured hand engagement pics, wedding albums, and job promotion brags. And who can forget the exotic vacation imagery? I feel in my heart that attending my reunion will just make me even more envious and depressed. I would like to see my friends, but I feel like they all have gotten more beautiful with age. Meanwhile, I have gotten fatter when I was already fat to begin with!

I can't believe that it has already been ten years. Where has the time gone?! I have to look at my resume to remember, which is another post entirely. For now, these are my feelings on that: 😒.

I want to go to my reunion, but only if I'm gorgeous and making Arab money. That may sound stupid, but I feel close enough to you to tell you how I feel. We'll see how far I have progressed for my 20-year reunion.