She's still preoccupied...with 1985

So I have been messing around on Facebook lately. I have to admit, for the most part I don't get it. I mean, yeah, it's nice to contact people you haven't seen in a long time and see what they're up to, but other than that it doesn't do much for me. I don't get all of the applications they have that you can sign up for, or how you have to invite your friends to join to. Some of them are a pain too, because they require you to visit them often and send stuff to your "friends" and ask them to send stuff back. I don't get it. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because I other day I received the following message in my inbox at Facebook:

Hi Michelle!

I hope you're doing well. I'm planning our 20 year high school reunion....can you believe it's been that long???!!! If you're interested in attending please send me your contact info (address, phone, etc).

Thanks,
Angie (lastname)

My first reaction was "Huh? This must be a mistake. I don't know anybody named Angie lastname and furthermore, there is NO WAY that it has been 20 years since I graduated high school. Simply not possible. La la la....I can't hear youooooooo......."

Then I did some quick math figures in my head( I almost had to get out the calculator) and realized it was true! It HAS been 20 years since I graduated high school!

Two things went through my mind:

Number one was-Get OUT!
and
Number two was-Man. I'm old.

I haven't responded to her yet. I realized later that I actually did know who she was, and not only did we go to high school together, but also middle school and elementary school. Although we were only friends for like two years in seventh grade.

So she's planning our high school reunion.

And she wants to know if I plan on attending.

I'll be perfectly honest here. My first reaction was "Heck, No, I don't plan on attending". Or "Yeah, when pigs fly". And also "Has Hell frozen over yet?"

Needless to say, High School was not one of the best times of my life.

I was a geek.

I had no friends.

I was awkward and unattractive.

Other "kids" made fun of me and I ate lunch alone behind the theater most days.

I never went to one football game or dance.

It was four years of pure torture for me and when it was over I left and I never looked back.

Why would I want to revisit that?

There's also the fact that I have gained a considerable amount of weight since high school and am not feeling my most attractive right now. Also, sometimes I feel like I haven't really accomplished that much since high school and I would be embarrassed to admit that to people I haven't seen in 20 years.

No kids. No house. No successful, high paying job.

The one thing I do have is my marriage to a wonderful man, who I met as a senior in high school. He was the only reason I made it to graduation. The shining light in an otherwise hellish four years.

But I wouldn't know anyone else there. They certainly wouldn't remember me. I was a nobody.

So what reason would I have to go to the reunion?

And yet there is a small part of me that wants to go.

I want to show people that I'm no longer that reclusive, skinny geek that ate lunch alone.

I want to show off my wonderful husband and my fifteen year marriage to the fifty percent of them that are now divorced. I want to shout from the rooftops that I'm gonna be a mom, and how cool is it that my daughter is coming from China?

But why? I have nothing to prove to these people. Going won't change who I am or the experience I had there 20 years ago, or even the doubts I have about myself still. And most of the people there would have no idea who I am anyway.

So I think I'll skip it.

My husband didn't graduate high school at all(but went on to earn a Master's Degree), and he had the same type of experience the two years he attended (a different) high school, so of course he's cool with skipping it.

I see no reason to go back and revisit a time in my life that was so hard. Sometimes I envy those people who say high school was the best time of their lives, but I like to think that the best time of my life is yet to come.

But it was nice to get the invite.



P.S. I did have friends during the four years I went to high school, it's just that all of my friends were at the stables, where my horse was and they all went to a different high school than I did. I wasn't a total loser. I'm still friends with many of those girls, 20 years later.

Also, I graduated in 1989, but the title is from the song "1985" by Bowling for Soup and it fit this post perfectly so I used it.