High School Dreams

For the record, I have not ever had even the slightest bit of interest in attending my 20th high School Reunion. I never humored the prospect, never pretended it would be a "fun time", never even once gave it a moment's worth of consideration. I'll reiterate my opinion on the subject again.

ME: At my own expense, you want me to leave beautiful, sunny, EXCITING Las Vegas, Nevada to travel to not-so-beautiful, not-so-sunny, not-at-all-exciting Marengo, Illinois to hang out with people I don't like? (Side note, there are quite a few folks I do like, but generally I cannot count on those people being there. More likely the folks I truly don't give a crap about will be there. UGH!)

REUNION COORDINATOR: Um...Yeah.

ME: Why would I do that?

REUNION COORDINATOR: Well...There's going to be a cash bar.

You get the idea.

All this being considered I have been haunted by dreams about attending my reunion. All of these dreams hint at the great time I'm missing out on, knowing that I would HATE every waking minute of this event.

Don't give me ANY psycho-mumbo-jumbo about my subconscious telling me I really want to go. I would rather spend an eternity with my nuts in a meat grinder than one minute at the fucking American Legion hall (they couldn't even manage a nice hotel somewhere...because there AREN'T any for 35 miles) with a bunch of folks I've given not one second's worth of thought about since graduation.

I'm not curious to see who's gotten fat, who's gotten old, who'd gotten hot, and who's gotten bald. I have nothing in common with these folks other than our time at the school and the relative few I have kept contact with are all caught up. Where's the fun here?

Were I not married I'd surely go. I said the eve of graduation that the only thing that would get me to go would be the chance to bang everyone who wouldn't give me the time of day then. Many of the girls there have gone through a marriage/divorce/fat/hot cycle or two and would likely be happy to spend time with the guy who has all his hair, hasn't gained much weight since 1988, is doing exactly what he said he would do with his life, and has been on TV a few times. Were I a single man now, hell yeah I'd love to live out my acid-wash jeans/big hair fantasy. I'm funnier, smarter, and way more capable of pulling that one off now.

So last night's dream was the most fascinating to me. Prior to the dream I checked in to the Yahoo Group formed for the reunion (and from what I can tell practically nobody is really planning on attending...except the poor souls who never went more than 20 miles from the town) and saw a photo or two of a friend I'd not thought about in years. Well I haven't thought about any of these folks in years, but you get the idea. This guy was something of a smart-assed, closeted anarchist by my estimation and I was surprised (saddened) to see him all family guy these days.

So the dream featured me enjoying the reunion at a way cool hotel NOT in Marengo with all of the people I may have actually been curious to see again and I was having a blast. Not realistic at all. When I met "Brian" I was shocked to see him there and we got caught up a bit. I told him that he was among the last people I'd expect to see at such a lame function. His reply...

"Yeah I know. But don't you remember hearing about that Jay White guy in Colorado?(Jay White is some fictitious name my brain made up and so is the accompanying story that followed in the dream)"

"No," I said.

"Jay White was the guy who went to his own 20th high school reunion just so he could blow up the school."

"And why did this make you come here," I said, hoping he didn't have a detonator under his jacket.

"I wanted to see who the 'Jay White' of our school would be."

Hmmm.....