I survived my 20th high school reunion. Part 2

I survived my 20th high school reunion. Part 2

After my man-sized pull on my Jack and Coke, I looked around and recognized quite a few classmates… Angela, Matt, Chalisa, Dan, Julie, Abby, Megan, Bryon, Tricia, Erin, Stacy, Amanda, etc…  Now I will say right now, that this is not everyone that was there, this is just a quick list of who I remembered seeing at the beginning, and I could have very well missed some, and added some that were not there until later.  I wondered over and said hello to Bryon, attempted to firm up some plans for crashing at his place that night, etc…  I then went and chatted with Dan for a bit, asked about how his daughter was doing, if he’d been shooting lately, etc.  I spoke with Matt and his wife quite a bit.  They are very good, down to earth, normal people.  I will say that Matt’s lovely wife Leah, has done a great job of calming Matt down!  Or at least I’m assuming it was her!  LOL, just pokin’ a little fun Matt, you are a great guy.  One of my larger surprises for the evening arrived about 30 minutes after I had; Mike flew in from, I believe it was AZ, with his wife.  The surprise was that not only did Mike remember me, he was quite happy to talk and hang out with me.  Now, you have to understand, Mike and I were on polar opposites of our high school class, in fact I can remember a number of times where we exchanged some heated, very unkind words.  Now I’m not trying to paint myself as some poor hapless victim in this relationship, quite the contrary I definitely gave as good as I got!  I was, to say the least, completely taken aback.  Here was a guy that arguably disliked me as much as I disliked him, and here we were talking amongst ourselves and the others in attendance.  I’m sure that the judicious amounts of social lubrication imbibed by both of us played a part in our amicable conversing, but none the less, we did more than co-exist in a small shared space without resorting to yelling.  There were more pleasant surprises in store for me, Kathleen coming up and saying hello and asking how I was, what I was doing, etc... was unexpected, pleasantly unexpected, but unexpected none the less.  Jim, who I swear has a portrait of himself 20 years older locked up in a closet a la Dorian Gray, was happy to shoot the shit, and chat.

                During this time I was marveling at some of these surprises with Missy and Chalisa, and was informed that I had missed an entire group of people in our high school on my preliminary Blog concerning the 20^th reunion I was now enjoying(?!).  Both Chalisa and Missy were part of a group of people that I will now dub The Floaters.  The Floaters have an uncanny ability to seemingly effortlessly float between the many different socio-economic groups of high school.  To the members of this group, I wish to offer my apologizes for leaving you out of the earlier post, it was not intentional… it is just that I view your remarkable ability to float with such amazement that I tend to block it out!  :) 

                One of the other earlier arrivals at the reunion was Bill and his wife.  Bill was as pleasant as he has always been, but now sports a rather dazzling mustache!  I was very surprised to learn that after his stint with the USMC (Thank you for your service Bill!  And all the other members of PHS 1993 who served in the Military, I appreciate your services and salute you all!) Bill was in an IT field like me…. At some point after that, Bill did what I think many of us would like to do and just said Fuck it, quit the job, the rat race, etc. and became a Farrier (Horse-shoe’er) Now this floored me, as I would have never pegged Bill for the type to say fuck it, not that I have any issues with it, hell I envy him! I just didn’t expect it of him.  Bill is a great conversationalist, and I enjoyed our time chatting. 

                There were, sadly, still a few classmates that seem to hold to the old “rules” Angela said almost nothing to me until after, or at least I assume after, multiple drinks, not great, but still better than Jodi, who the entire evening never said one word to me.  Then of course there was Steve, who I didn’t recognize, so I made no attempt to speak with, but, neither did he.  To them, I say… Oh well, you didn’t hurt my feelings any… sorry you couldn’t have grown up after 20 years.

                Tammy arrived at some point, it was great to talk to her and once again remind her, that yes, we are all getting to be middle-aged!  ;) Sorry Tammy, but you know it’s true!  I also got to talk briefly with Julie, Abby, and Amanda…. Amanda was, well, she was Amanda!  I don’t think she will ever be able to sit still for more than a few minutes where there are other people about!  I briefly spoke with Erin, not much more than a hello, but that was through no fault of either of us, as we were both in the middle of talking to others and doing the quick walk to the bar.

                Tricia was at our reunion as well, and I got the opportunity to talk with her and apologize for not stopping in and saying hello when I was dropping off Cushla after our visit.  I explained, honestly even, that I didn’t want to intrude, and that in the past we hadn’t exactly been friends!  It was very nice getting the opportunity to talk with her, catch up, and realize that she is the epitome of people growing up, and becoming wiser, more tolerant and generally pleasant people!  Tricia, if you read this, I just want to say thank you for re-affirming my beliefs that humanity can evolve, and people can change!  I mean no disrespect, nor am I being snarky, you are a wonderful person, and I look forward to talking with you on FB, and at the next reunion.

                The evening progressed with more social lubrication, a couple of quick trips to the “buffet” I will say the meatballs were rather tasty, but they removed the food a little quickly for my taste, but that’s why I stopped at Penguin Point beforehand!  The music selection was, surprisingly, quite diverse and pretty good.  I will say that the DJ didn’t seem to get the fact that we all were attempting to talk… the music was far too loud, and numerous people, including myself had asked them to turn it down.  Apparently the DJ’s idea of turning it down was to nudge the slider down about 1/16^th of an inch, and then turn it back up even higher after a few minutes!  Annoying, but not the end of the world; most of us just went outside and talked on the balcony.  After a while, it was determined that the reunion should move from the Country Club, to the Eagles lodge, as another of our classmates was in the process of playing a gig, and the atmosphere, and the drink prices, are much better at the lodge. 

                I would estimate that about 95% of those in attendance migrated to the Eagles Lodge.  It was very, very loud upstairs, but downstairs was much more conducive to conversation!  This is where I spent about 85% of my time at the Eagles, talking with Matt, Chalisa, Chalisa’s Husband, Julie, Bryon and his wife, Mike and his wife, and various others as they drifted in and out.  It was a great time.  I saw many people that I know, and quite a few that I did not.  There were many conversations had, and far too many laughs to remember.  During one of these many conversations, I lost track of Bryon and his wife… I was mildly concerned, as he was my lodging for the night.  After a few minutes I wandered upstairs to see if I could find them.  Still no luck, I wandered outside in time to see their car pulling out.  Oh well, I send a couple quick text messages to see what the deal is, and find out that they are running for food.  Later on I find out that Bryon ate, and then promptly passed out!  LOL :D  I was not really concerned, as I knew I could make do regardless.  About this same time the party was beginning to disperse.  I said my good byes and went to my car, where I sat for a bit.  I jumped on FB and saw that a couple of my favorite people in Plymouth were still up and going strong.  Don and Kathy are the Mother and Step-father of a good friend from days past, Chris.  I posted a quick follow up message, and to my delight was invited over.  I headed over to their place, to find them all on the back porch bar.  At this point Don, Kathy, Kathy’s daughter Heather; who I also know from days past, and another of their friends our outside hanging out, drinking and generally having a good time.  I bellied up to the bar, had a drink or two and proceeded to spend a couple more hours catching up with good friends.  Around 0330 I think it was, everyone was beat, and started to turn in.  I was offered any place in the house I could crash, but politely declined, as they already had a full house with Heather, her husband, and her children there.  The last thing they needed was a large, snoring guy waking everyone up!  I said my goodbyes and headed to the car. 

I decided at this point, as any middle-aged madman would, that crashing in the car for a couple of hours would be a good idea.  I choose to park close by in the Penguin Point parking lot, it’s fairly quiet, and secluded there.  Unfortunately I made the mistake of parking too close to the street light.  I reclined my seat, cracked the windows, and proceeded to attempt to nap.  It was not easy, it was bright, and though exhausted, sleep was elusive.  I grabbed my tee-shirt that I had worn earlier in the day and used that as a face cover to assist in sleeping, it was just beginning to work, when I heard the rather distinctive crackle of a police radio; Great, just what I need hassled by my hometown PD for trying to be good and not driving after drinking.  I popped my head up enough to see the cruiser and the officer approaching my car.  I sat back up in the seat and rolled the window down a little farther and prepared for harassment.  To my delight the officer, who appeared to be very young but that could just be my middle age’edness peeking through, was just wanting to know what I was doing and make sure there was no distress, I wasn’t dead, etc… He asked if I had been drinking, and I responded that yes I had, it had been a few hours by this time, but yes I had.  I offered to move along, but he stated that it was OK, and to stay safe and have a good evening.  Wow, so much win on this trip I could barely believe it!  I reclined my seat back again and had a fitful nap until around 0500.  At that point I gave up and headed out of town.  I stopped off at the gas station as I was heading out and grabbed some caffeine, and off I went.  After about an hour or so of driving… well, more of madly trying to keep myself awake through various methods, I gave up and pulled into a Travel Plaza/truck stop.  I went in, used the facilities, grabbed additional sustenance and went to the car.  This time I left it running with the AC on so I wasn’t sweltering, and actually got a couple hours of sleep!  Once I woke up and got back on the road, it was a long, but un-eventful trip.  I will say that next time I hope that our reunion is on a different weekend than the BBF, as attempted to find a place to stay, that isn’t over $200/night, is near impossible!

I am glad I finally decided to attend, and that I didn’t wimp out at the end and just head home.  I learned a lot about those that I shared my middle and late teens with, and even learned a little more about myself.  All in all it was a wonderful, if exhausting, time.

Stay safe my friends, and live your life like you stole it, ‘cause no one is getting outta here alive!

I survived my 20th high school reunion. Part 1

I survived my 20th high school reunion. Unscathed!

So as you the depraved readers of my Blog know, I was heading to my 20^th High School reunion last week.  Well I’m happy to report that I made it out alive!  I shall now begin the tale of the journey there, and of rediscovery…

Friday the 30^th of August arrives, I’m working from home; wife and daughters are preparing to stay the night with my sister-in-law, as they occasionally do that, much to the enjoyment of my daughters.  I’ve been given a brief list of tasks to accomplish, while preparing to depart the following afternoon for the above stated reunion, watching our 6 dogs, the neighbors 4 dogs, and a friend and fellow PTO member’s puppy.  I know, I know, 11 dogs?!? You must be completely freakin’ nuts.  Well, yes, yes I am, although that has nothing to do with watching the dogs… you see once you hit around 4 or 5 dogs, adding extras really doesn’t matter/change much… it just means a little more dodging when walking down the halls, extra food dishes, and more fur balls to deal with.  All in all not a big deal, normally…. Now the “puppy” I was watching is a German Shepard who is about 4 or 5 months old… She is a sweet pup, just has some issues being without humans, and she likes to chew…. Needless to say we had a couple of casualties due to inquisitive puppy teeth syndrome!  I was able to achieve my running about, and even had a little time to grab some grub.  I was sitting in my family room, surrounded by 8 of the 11 dogs (3 of the neighbors were at their house) watching a movie, Twixt; not a bad movie, nothing great, but nowhere near the worst cinematic experience I’ve had… but I digress.  Around 12:30 or 1:00 am, I let all the dogs out, pack up for the night, and head to bed.  Now like many people that means that the next 45 minutes or so is spent on my smartphone catching up on a few games, email browsing, etc… damn smartphone, I used to read, now I play on my phone!  Not so smart for me!  At this point it is rapidly approaching 2:30 am; not my normal time to go to sleep, but not the end of the world, it would still have meant about 6 and a half hours of sleep on a normal evening, not great, but not too bad either.  Well this was not destined to be a “normal” night; at approximately 2:45, as I’m just drifting into a nice haze of sleep, one of the dogs decides to dare come in close proximity of another, this elicited a vicious round of barking and growling which had the effect of about 10 gallons of ice cold water being dumped on my head!  Needless to say, sleep was instantly rinsed away.  Normally I would yell at the pups to shut up, roll over and go back to sleep… not so this night.  I guess it was a combination of now wife and daughters, knowing I needed to drive up for my reunion, and the anxiety of the reunion that kept me staring at the ceiling until close to 5:00am.  At that point I gave up, got outta bed, and finally finished up re-installing Windows 7 on my Sister-in-law’s laptop that she is going to have my nephew use.  I’ve been very lazy with that laptop, I’ve had it sitting around my recliner in the family room for months… kept getting errors when trying to install Windows, etc… well that morning I just defaulted the BIOS, and yanked one of the RAM modules out, and lo and behold it worked fine.  Once that was done, I looked around and realized that the sun was beginning to peek out… looked at the clock… around 7:00 am… damn.  I cleaned up my crap from the laptop job, rinsed out my cup from my Sodastream, and thought I’ll grab a couple hours of sleep and be fine.  Knowing how I am when I sleep, I set the alarm on my cell phone for 10:30, just to be on the safe side.  I collapsed on the bed, after scooting the Chihuahua and the Affenpinscher off my side of the bed and pillows.  After around 2 hours I woke to the wonderful feeling of a cold, wet, dog nose in the small of my back… now this nose was far too large to be one of the aforementioned pups that were on the bed, so I knew I was in for a surprise… I rolled over to see the 80 pound German Shepard staring at me, only then to place a large, heavy, clawed paw on my side…. Not the way I wanted to wake up to say the least.  I roll back over and struggle to see the clock on my wife’s night stand… find that my contact-less eyes can only make out a blur of red light.  I suddenly realize that I hadn’t let the dogs go out before I attempted to collapse.  “Damn, well this sucks… “I herded them outside and look at the clock, only 8:45!!! Shit, this is going to be a long day.  I feed the brood that was at my house, walk over to the neighbor’s house and feed the 3 that were anxiously awaiting my appearance.  Listing to a Blue Tick Hound howling at the top of her lungs is most definitely not the way I wanted to become fully awake!

I stumbled about the house for a while, slowly work on a couple of counter tops in our on-going kitchen/dining room remodel; shower, as by now the sweat was pouring off me.  By this time it is almost 10:00 am.  Well I was planning on leaving around 1:00 pm for the reunion, as I wanted to have plenty of time for the drive, my dinner at Pizza Bills, and hopefully a quick visit with a good friend or two.  I then realize that I haven’t packed yet… so I pack, bring the dogs all back in as it’s over 100° in the sun, and grab a quick snack so I’m not starving by the time I get to my home town and end up eating enough burrito goodness for 3 people!  By this time It is approaching noon, I realize that an additional shower might, just might make it a little easier to manage the 3+ hour drive, so I shower, get dressed in my “traveling” clothes… jean shorts, tee shirt, and tennis shoes.  No point dressing up to drive… then I’ll just be a sweaty mess before I ever even get there!  My wife calls me at this point asking if I can drop by her Sister’s on the way out of town to deliver her MicroSDHC card that I looked at, and recovered a couple of pictures for her, as her Samsung GS3 decided it didn’t like the card anymore.  I said sure, I was planning on stopping by anyway to say bye, and that I also, finally, have her other laptop finished and ready to go for her son.  I look at the clock, it’s 1230 by this point.. I have to go let all the dogs back out, and get them all put up before I leave.  Dog’s done, it’s 12:55, OK, so I’m not getting on the road by 1, not the end of the world, I’ll still have plenty of time.  Drive over to my Sister-in-law’s and deliver the SD card and the laptop, talk to my daughters, watch my youngest perform her latest aqua acrobatics, talk to the wife, said hi to the Sister in law and my nephew, and jumped on the road…  I chose to take a back way out of town that I normally do not, not a problem, I have my GPS on the phone, except you have to pay attention to the GPS, and not FB status updates!  Well that cost me a mere 10 minutes, nothing major, so I’m on the road…. And run into the first construction zone before I’m even out of Indianapolis.  Now I knew about this construction, even reminded myself of it earlier in the week, but, I suck and it still surprised me!  Next up came the construction on 31, again, I knew it, but…  Then just before Peru the rains hit… I hate driving in the rain, mostly because so many other people get plain stupid driving in the rain!  It seems to be one of two tracks on driving in the rain:

1.  The rain means that I have to slow down to a complete crawl and swerve back and forth between lanes, or
2. The rain makes it so I can drive 90 miles an hour and pay no attention to anything!

Both of the above drive me insane!  It’s rain, it’s not ice, it’s not sleet, and it’s just rain, no reason to slow down to 20 miles an hour on the highway, unless you cannot see anything.    On the flip side of that issue, you have the morons who seem to think that 90 MPH while it is pouring down rain is a good idea!!!!

After all of this, I arrive in Plymouth around 4:30.  Now by this time I’m good and hungry, and since I’d been posting on FB during the drive up (Relax all, I was using text to speech on my GSIII, no typing while driving for this guy.) I had discovered that Pizza Bills had closed for the weekend!  This is a travesty, and something must be done!  Regardless thanks for the heads up Amanda, I would have been far more pissed if I had driven to PB’s only to find it closed!  This way I had 2 hours to sob into the steering wheel, so I was fairly adjusted to the idea that there would be no Wet Burrito loving for me on this trip… Damn, that sounds pretty perverted when I phrase it like that!  Anywho, I stopped at Penguin Point, as Amanda and Co. had done earlier.  I always find it refreshing when I go somewhere that I’m not known to eat, while openly carrying my sidearm, and no one cares/notices; but that is a whole ‘nother topic for another day.  While enjoying my tenderloin and fries, I texted my friend Rick, who had told me to get in contact with him regardless of if he was going to make it to the reunion, I found out that he had a house full of people, and being a somewhat polite person, I told him I didn’t want to intrude… That statement was answered within a couple of minutes with the simple statement of “Get your ass over here!”  LOL, nothing like a good friend to give it to you straight! 

                I when to his home, and after a quick text exchange concerning my sidearm, I arrived and caught up with my good friend, met his children, and his lovely wife, as well as some of his wife’s family.  It was a wonderful time and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to catch up and see how everything has gone for him.  Around 6:30 or 6:45 pm I quickly changed clothes and took my leave of Rick and his youngest child to head to the reunion.  My trusty GSIII told me that I had about 15 minutes to drive to get to the Plymouth Country Club and my 20^th high school reunion; I was fine with that, just driving through the old home town was kind of an interesting event… so much has changed, but yet nothing has changed.  I suppose this thought is shared by most people that visit their home town after an extended time away; the last time I was in Plymouth before this summer was a few years ago, and that was for a funeral… before that was back in 2000 for another funeral, so not a whole lot of enjoyment type site seeing going on!  As I grew closer, I experienced a rather rare thing for me… anxiety over going to the reunion… This is rare for me, as I really don’t give a shit what people think about me… I just really don’t care, so the anxiety of going to the reunion was kind of a shock to me.  When I was about a mile out from the PCC, I actually thought to myself “I don’t have to go to this, I could just turn around and go home, no harm, no foul” I dismissed this and shoved it out of my mind, as I’m not one to back down from something I’ve chosen to do or support.  I arrived, parked my vehicle near the back row, for various reasons that I’m not going to bore you all with right now, just letting you all know that there was a reason I choose to park that far from the door.  After a quick check of vehicle contents, holster re-adjustment, and a quick breath mint, I walked to the door.  I noticed the “check-in” table where the ubiquitous name tags sat; I quickly recognized the woman sitting at the table closest to me as Megan, I had some classes with her IIRC, and we had worked together at Ponderosa in high school.  As I walked up to the table readying myself to pay and collect my name tag, I wondered if anyone would recognize me, or remember me; well that those questions were answered almost instantaneously as Megan looked up and greeted me with “Well hello Mr. Partridge”.  OK, so I’m recognized and remembered, so there are two fears put to rest!  I paid my $25 admission fee, waited for change… I had a couple of $100 bills on me and plastic, so change took a bit.  I walked into the bar area where the reunion was taking place, I noticed a few people that I knew and recognized… I choose to forego the quick greetings and headed straight for the $ bar!  Social lubrication was going to have to be a priority for this event… for some reason I was nervous as hell!  I had already begun to sweat profusely and was beginning to feel self-conscious about it.  I ordered a Jack & Coke from the friendly bartender… was informed the price… Holy shit, $8.50 for double tall!  Well I am glad I packed my flask and brought it in with me!  I paid, took a good, man-sized pull of the elixir, and began to look around and see who I could talk to.

                OK, at this point I realize that this post is getting to be very long… I’m going to break this up into at least 2 parts…. Sorry for the length and rambling quality of this post.