The Greener The Grass
I received the invitation in the mail. It has been 15 years since I saw 95 percent of the people I went to high school with. I can still see them, in my rear view mirror. My life has taken many turns, and most have been very good to me. Through the few people I have kept in touch with, I find out that a lot of them have not had the best of luck.
I debate with my self over what reasons I really have to go to this? Should I go just to see everyone, to enjoy people that I basically told that after 12 years of seeing every day that I don’t have to see you anymore? Or to see if the people that I have not kept in touch with, that I couldn’t stand then, have the life I told them they would?
Time to cash in the frequent flyer miles and take a trip back to the land of the bored.
I arrive in the airport, knowing that I am home once again. All it takes is one good whiff of the paper mill ridden air and I instantly figure out that my allergies will let me know later that I should have never come here.
Next up: rental car. I tell the manager to give me the best vehicle he has got. My choices are between the two seat BMW or the manager's choice... the all-durable KIA. Do I show up to a high school reunion in a BMW, flaunting a car I would never drive, instantly sending out signals of gayness, or do I drive the KIA, the car that could make Karen Carpenter look fat? Fuck it! Bring on the gaydar special, the Beemer.
I now make the drive towards Mayberry, listening to the same radio station that I was listening to when I left. For all I know, it could be the same song, as I can hear the record skipping as the song plays. Yes, I said record. Nothing like listening to 24 hours of Skynyrd.
One thing I should make clear before we go along any further; I am not ashamed of where I am from. I already knew as a kid that just because you were born there, it didn’t mean you had to die there. To each their own, but it just isn’t the life that I wanted for myself.
I arrive at the place of where we went to school and instantly see that not much has changed. Huddled over to one side are the burnouts, to another side are the religious freaks and to another are the nerds. I seem to fall into the category of burnout, since all of the athletes got along with the burnouts very well. If I wasn’t playing sports I was going to concerts, and the true burnout appreciated that I never fucked with them. Fact is, the group of jocks that I played sports with never fucked with anyone.
It took all of 5 minutes for someone to ask me if I had a joint on me. I say no, the security guard at the airport found it on me while doing his full body cavity search. He let me go, due to me telling him my high school reunion couldn’t start without me. Someone finally sparks one up, and I notice that the nerds are making their way over to us. I do not partake with them, I want to remember this whole day, or at least until I hit the scotch and waters.
I see Julie, the Poison fan. Wow, she is still wearing the same Poison shirt from 1990. I think she may think that she had to show some kind of identity of the year, but all I keep looking at is the poor cotton material on her. It doesn’t help that she has put on a pound or 90 and that this shirt now could be used as a washcloth. She asks me if I have been to any concerts lately and I tell her of my travels around the country… and of all the groups I have seen over the years. She then tells me that she’d seen Bret Michaels at a club a couple of weeks ago, and brags to me about catching a clump of his hair. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her.
Damn, there’s John… the guy voted “most likely to succeed”. I imagine talking to him about his medical practice, but I soon find out that he just got out of jail due to the 300 pounds of meth he was cooking in his mother’s trailer.
Over there is Stacey, the one who would cry if you mentioned one word about sex. Nice pack of rats, I mean kids, you now have. She truly must have been born with 10 fallopian tubes. 15 years, and 11 kids, so much for the crying about a great cock and balls joke.
The list goes on and on… From Bill the junkie, to Chris, or now affectionately known as Christina. When people ask what I do I see their eyes glaze over, as I am sure they see mine glaze due to the redundancy in finding out that some still live with their parents, and due to the information some share with me that they can’t figure out why they can’t get a third mortgage on their trailers. Most don’t have all of their real teeth, and some haven’t bothered to get any kind of replacement.
After general chitchat, we finally move on to the only place that could make this a halfway decent time; The bar. Not once in my life have I ever had a bad time at a bar, and today will not be any different.
I must have bought 10 rounds of drinks for everyone. I didn’t see anyone else that I thought was going to buy, so I figured “why not?” The one thing that did make me laugh out loud was the women that wanted to hook up on the spot. I have to tell them I am married, and have been for 15 years. I hear many congratulations on that day, and tales of how two or three divorces can really take a toll on a woman’s ass. The ones that really came off as nuts were the ones that told me that since your wife isn’t here you really couldn’t consider it cheating. My reply was; “You wouldn’t give it up when I was begging for it in school, why now?” And the usual answer was; “Well, that was then, this is now. There is a bathroom in the back we can go to, isn’t there?”
All in all, it was a fun time to see that only a few had made it out. The sad part to me was that most had fallen into the same cracks that their parents or friends had. The most obvious thing that came to me was wondering was I just lucky that I could see the future that I would have had if I stayed, or was it dumb luck? To see so many people that I thought would have been leaders, CEO’s, or just productive people, only to become something even they would never have imagined.
It still looked good, only it looked a whole lot better in my rear view mirror. AGAIN.
Spreading truth,
Manimal Lector
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