Thursday, March 13, 2008

• “Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.”

  Currently Listening One Cell In the Sea By A Fine Frenzy see related

  Do you ever log on to your Facebook (or myspace or friendster or whatever the new thing is now - I'm too old to keep up anymore anyway) to find a really random message from someone you haven't heard from in years? I never know what to do when that happens. I mean, of course I respond. I've always been one of those "too nice" people who could never find it in herself to snub someone. I do, however, only respond after spending a solid twenty minutes rereading the message, drinking coffee, and trying to come up with the wittiest possible response I can. Heaven forbid my second impression be a boring one.
  
  Anyway, as a result of such a message, I'm now making plans to take a weekend trip to Chicago to visit some old friends from high school. These are friends who, barring the occasional run-in in a random bar in our hometown, I have all but lost touch with over the past 5 years since I moved away. They're still in the same band they formed back in the day, and they're playing a few shows in Chicago. All of this reminiscing got me thinking about young adulthood and how I look back on the past several years now that I've reached this elusive "real world" my mother was always warning me about.
  
  After spending several hours looking through old pictures and listening to some of those classic songs that just seem to define my adolescent experience, I've come to a few conclusions. I think that twentysomethings are often overly sentimental or overly cynical about high school. Now don’t get me wrong, by the time senior year rolled around, I was ready to get the %$#@ out as much as the next kid, but for the most part I enjoyed high school. Throughout high school and college, most of us refused to admit that, mostly because the college "experience" is supposed to be so awesome that it clearly must be better than high school, but I think I really knew it all along. Sure, I took enough AP classes to earn a year of college credit when I should have been partying my tail off with the rest of my friends, but I didn’t quite have my priorities straight back then. My friends and I still partied the best we could. Though what more can you really expect from farm kids than drinking in a field on weekends and running from overweight cops? Overweight cops who, coincidentally, were also probably related to/neighbors with/family friends with just about everyone at the party. Gotta love that small town life. I haven't met a lot of people since I moved away from Tiskilwa whose high school graduating class was only like fifty people, and they’d all been going to school together since kindergarten. Honestly, it’s the kind of messed up thing that if, twenty years from now, it turned out to actually be some kind of cruel government experiment, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
  
  Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited about seeing old friends, but I’m not sure how I feel about myself as I approach a reunion. A lot of people tell me the best part of reunions is catching up with people you’ve lost touch with. The weird thing, though, is that I haven’t lost touch with any of my good friends – not a single person. The guys I broke curfew with then are the exact same guys I’m on the phone with now when I'm "making a business call" at work.. I guess what they say is true: bonds formed while sprinting from the hood-mounted searchlight of a cop car are bonds that last a lifetime.
  
  
  

  • 8:27 AM
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