If you’re ever on the fence about going to your 20-year high school reunion, I have some advice for you: go. I wish I had. My high school reunion is taking place this weekend. I had planned to go all along but was defeated along the way by my brother’s wedding being the next weekend, not wanting to take too much time off work given the aforementioned event requiring some time off work, and the logistics of managing a cross-country trek with or without kids and a husband traveling on business. So I resort to obsessively checking Facebook today, waiting eagerly for updates and reports from classmates, who politely say that they wish I were there, and who are having a great time. I think there’s got to be some benefit to escaping once in a while to the past, imagining that you’re young again, and reclaiming your pre-child-rearing identity. I don’t remember too much about that identity except that I had longer hair and didn’t have to worry about sucking in my gut on a regular basis. In any case, I’m wishing I were there.

Here’s the report from my friend Richie:
Well, under normal circumstances I would ask you to kill me if you ever saw me in the lobby bar of a suburban DC hotel all alone at 12:30 a.m. eating chicken tenders BUT I am having the greatest time!
I met up with Yoonah at the hotel and we went to the Happy Hour at a bar in Rosslyn. I immediately felt like I was back in TJ (anxious), but everyone is so great. Hung out with Kristen Knipling for a while, but also had conversations with people who never spoke to me in school! So much fun… I wish you were here. Everyone looks exactly the same except a little rounder.
Tomorrow, TJ day and the dinner/dance. Will report in the evening.

Photo above is from the 10-year reunion. Although I enjoyed it (of particular note is that Richie attended that one in drag), 10 years isn’t such a long time. Most people hadn’t had kids yet, and people looked generally the same, if only a bit worse for wear from steady beer consumption. After 20 years, stuff happens. People’s lives take drastically different courses, and I think at this age for the most part you are who you are — for the most part more mature, humbled by life, and able to look back and high school and laugh (and looking back at the hair in the pictures people are posting from high school, there’s a lot to laugh at). I’ve been enjoying the pre-reunion postings online (“Michael Kirkland wants to make sure all his classmates at the TJHSS&T; reunion know that he invented Post-It Notes”; “Lorelei Brown Experiencing huge life changes all at once. Feeling trepidacious about HS Reunion – I’m fat and don’t think I’m going to lose 30 pounds by 8 o’clock.”; “Mike Benton is going to my 20-year HS reunion tomorrow dressed as my day job. Secret Agent Astronaut Millionaire Cowboy.”). And when do people officially start looking old? 50? I’ll be cutting it close for the next reunion.