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Saturday, June 21, 2008

High School Reunions

My 15 year is tonight. My BFF has been BEGGING me for weeks now to go. I've come up with a long laundry list of reasons why I can't but the simplest one is....I just don't want to.

Ryan isn't home and I'd have to go as the third wheel instead of a double date. My mother is sick and I don't want to ask her to baby sit, though she would. I would only be there to hang out with the people I liked enough to stay friends with and I hang out with her all the time anyway...... Though there is this one guy that I'd love to hang with but I don't know if the Pres. allowed him leave to make it. Yes, John L, I'm talking about you.

Most importanty it doesn't represent a happy, simpler time for me. It sucked, badly. I was never a good student and I was a year behind my actual "class" so all my friends that I had had since kindergarten had graduated the year before. When I failed I didn't care about failing....didn't care about much of anything.

If there had been Emo when I was a teenager, that would have been me...on the inside. On the outside I was perfectly dressed without a hair out of place and my make up was perfect unless I fell asleep in class and I smugged my mascara.

I'll never forget when the football star, who was failing just as badly as I was, tried to cheat off of me in Geometry. I never laughed so hard before in my life. I had to thank him for putting a smile on my face for once in my 5....yes 5 years of High School. It wasn't until that last year that my failing hurt. All my friends were gone except my now BFF. I was just, blah. I didn't go to Homecoming, didn't go to Prom. It DID give me one extra try at All-State Choir though but that wasn't quit enough consolation.

About the only good thing that happened that year was meeting Ryan. I actually met him at my grandparent's because I wasn't allowed out of the house. I was on lock down for packing up my things on my 18th birthday and moving out, under LOTS of protest from my mother. Yeah, I'd call dragging me back to the house by the hair from my spot on the corner where I waited for my friend to pick me up.... a little...um hostile.

I still snuck away though. It was sweet! While my mother was at the driver's window telling my friend to just go home I snuck around the back and climbed into the passenger side and told her," just drive." We were so "Thelma and Louise," with her baby in the back set sleeping.

I think I was the only legal adult that had to run away from home. I went back about three months later when I got hungry. Turns out my friend who was living on her own , on wellfare, with her daughter couldn't make it after her mother, who was an old friend of my mom's, cut her off for taking me in. Even my measly pay check I earned for frying up chicken at Popeye's, couldn't compare to her "allowance" that had been put on hold. I was about to get fired anyway for not being able to tell the difference between a breast and a thigh after two months. I really was a pampered princess and didn't know it. Lock down was good, it was better than the street.

So while everyone was shopping for Prom dresses I was shopping for wedding dresses. Ryan still teases me that I married him only to get out of my parent's house. There MAY have been a very TINY bit of truth to that but the happiness he brought to me outshined my need to be rescued from the dungeon. The fact that my mother hated him and he looked like James Hetfield from Metallica was a plus too.

The class vice-president...or was she the secretary??. I don't remember.

She's e-mailed me twice to see if I'm going and I have a good feeling it's only because they're mentally counting the money that they'll recoupe for the next shin dig. It CERTAINLY is not because I was that popular with the "head of the class" peeps who are in charge of this thing.

I'm just at the point in my life where I'm learning to walk away from my past and live for today. I finally feel "light" for once.

Maybe in another five years I'll be ready for the big 20 but for now, I think staying home with the sprouts and goofing off in the pool after running my last set of 4/1 intervals will be much more fun and fulfilling.

M has taken to wearing every stitch of clothing she owns in one given day. She's been struggling to get into a pair of winter PJ's, that are her favorite, for about an hour now. The zipper was stuck and even I couldn't get them undone.

She just brought them to me, zipper fully fuctional and when I asked, "How'd you do that?" She put her hands on her three year old hips, poked out her chest and said, "muscles, mommy!"

Yup, much more fun than a reunion filled with memories of a life I'd rather forget....

2 comments:

Viv said...

So proud of you on the running fron, hun!

Listen I did not go to my reunion either. I got along better with the class younger than me since I was in their class...yep not the smartes apple.If it was not happy times why the hell bother :-)

thanks for the comments on my blog. I saw the light on that comment It brought me back to reality thanks.

Delane said...

HS reunions Suck..plain simple.