High school reunion or museum/zoo exhibition?

Marcella: You know, when you start getting invited to your ten year high school reunion, time is catching up.
Martin Q. Blank: Are you talking about a sense of my own mortality or a fear of death?
Marcella: Well, I never really thought about it quite like that.
Martin Q. Blank: Did you go to yours?
Marcella: Yes, I did. It was just as if everyone had swelled.

[Talking to his psychiatrist about going to his high school reunion] Marty: They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they've all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?"

(From Grosse Pointe Blank)

The reunion just crept up on me. I hated high school. I was a nerd. I had no intentions of going. Why would I want to relive the experience? I didn't stay in touch with anyone, nor do I remember them fondly. But, at the last minute, I decided to go. What the heck. I didn't have any other plans for Saturday night. I figured that I could pay the $40 and consider it as admission to a zoo or museum exhibit. A study on a cross section of people my age-- static or dynamic? Maybe I could get a sense of how refined I have become in comparison-- or not.

When I arrived, the hostess informed me that I might be the first one there. Not cool. I was just about to go walk around the block a few times when she returned with the news that there were 5 other awkward people standing around. At least we could be awkward together.
As others arrived, I felt like I was on display as much as they were on display. We sized each other up and down and squinted to find recognizable features. I was thinking that it might be an early night, if this what it would be like. The ice was broken when one guy whom I remember from elementary school walked in and started hugging us. We were all new at this at unsure of the proper reunion etiquette.

It was amazing how "down we forgot as up we grew". I feared the presuppositions based on who we were 10 years ago. I feared that after 10 years, all of my adolescent insecurities would come rushing back. But it wasn't so. If one held the belief that I hadn't changed, that would establish their own inability to change. I believe that I have become an emancipated nerd. Freed from the bondage of pubescent social oppression and metamorphosed into a social butterfly in my own right. I saw, through the thickening jowls and waists to the thinning hair and waists, a community in which we share our birth year and, for some, 5 years of our lives. At least we came together with a common ground to stand on, considering how we have moved on to such a variety of walks of life. And we all knew how to party like it was 1997.

I was most shocked to catch up with some classmates whom I hadn't seen since elementary school. Since I was only at this high school for 2 years, somehow I hadn't run into them during that epoch. I learned that a school yard bully had become an RCMP. I learned that although they grew out of their sweatpants, they would still chase the girls around the playground if given a chance. I learned (albeit, from an inebriated classmate) that I am hot. I learned that I did, in fact, have an old high school flame. Even though it is partly true that I didn't date anyone with whom I went to school. We hooked up on grad night, you see. He got his absolution for showing up on my front lawn drunk after we broke up.

At 1 am, we were kicked out of the restaurant, and the amnesty came to a close as we all formed cliques and went our separate ways to after-parties and clubs. In another 10 years, I wonder what will have transpired? I was the only widow this time around, but sadly, in another 10 years there will likely be another. There may be some more missing faces, and there may be some new ones that couldn't make it this time around. There will be wallets of more pictures, there will be more accomplished professionals, and probably some who haven't done much.

I went expecting nothing more than a study of observation. I left realising that I have become something. It is something intangible and gradual, but I have grown more into me. I can't say that the insecurities have completely dissolved, but they have evolved. As I overcome each one, I find that I am more of the hot person yet to be than the nerd that was.

Cheers to another ten years!