After all this time you’d think you learned how to tie a tie.
No. Not you. Still confuses you.
Confuses you like; why are you going to your 20th High School reunion?
You got invited. They made a big deal out of it – somebody tracked you down and wrote “please” all over the place.
You were stunned at first; surprised, actually.
You had no idea anybody remembered you.
Well, to be honest, they didn’t.
Everybody got the same bended knee.
They went down the list – scoured the yearbook. Pulled out names.
Guys were easier to track down than girls. Guys never changed their last names, unless the FBI had something to do to with it, or you were in Witness Protection. Girls, a lot of them, got married – got divorced – got married again – got divorced again – would take a clairvoyant to track them down.
Still – there was your curiosity.
Pretty much lost touch with everybody about three hours after commencement.
Had plans – got canceled – had other plans – got more canceled. That was your life.
College – scraped by – Desk job – not so much – 9 to 5 – Frozen in place for 10 years, driving a UPS Truck.
Not high on any woman’s to-do list.
But you decide to go – “Coat and Tie”.
You had to find both.
1972; not a lot of people from your age group were wearing those things, unless they went to private school. Maybe graduation, but . . .
Became presentable and decidedly overdressed when you arrived at the reunion. The month’s salary you blew at The Beverly Center convinced yourself you would be needing the ensemble eventually. Funerals and weddings seemed like candidates.
Eyeing the mob: No date – no current – no ex – no wife. You stood at the reception line looking like you ran out of gas on a freeway offramp.
Handed a name tag with your senior picture on it. You bore a close resemblance to an electric outlet somebody stuck a fork in. People looked and squinted and couldn’t place either. You went wandering feeling nicely anonymous but deeply rejected at the same time.
The main dining room was a din of shrieks, roars and A Horse With No Name blaring in the background.
You figured the least you could do under the circumstances was get baked. So you wandered over to the no-host bar where the line was five deep and you applied ample coats of serenity, gazing around at your neighbors who were vacillating between hysterics and a mad desire to get hammered.
The Managers-in-training alumni were diving into the hard stuff – sloshing down Johnnie Walker like someone had an edge they needed to get rid of in a hurry. Everybody else, in lieu of hacking on weed went for the Cabernet. You could drink a gallon and still sound reasonably articulate. And everyone was pledged to do their best.
You knew the evening was sailing into uncharted territory when the entire contents of a tumbler of Almaden Pinot Noir sailed across, hitting your face, shirt and shoes, accompanied by a terrified scream from a classmate whose glass was the culprit.
Momentarily blinded from the ocean of red and deaf from the vocal pyrotechnics, the next thing you knew you were being toweled down like a Greyhound by one of the bartenders and the now-catatonic classmate who kept apologizing and asking if you were okay.
Of course you were – the shirt cost ninety bucks though. You finally got the wine out of your eyes long enough to catch a glimpse of the woman looking suitably guilty looming over you.
Christ. You knew her. Glynnis. You couldn’t stand her. She made your life miserable in school. And now she was doing it again. Why?
After being suitably dry and back to some semblance of normal, it was now Glynnis’s responsibility to attach herself to you like fly-paper. She felt horrible – she also came alone.
Twenty years earlier she was the one who would occasionally try to trip you walking down the aisle of the Number 7 Bus on your way to school in the morning.
She was the one who dumped most of the contents of a really cheap bottle of perfume through the slats of your locker, so everything you came into contact with reeked of a scent that made your eyes water.
She was the one who purposely sent you the wrong answers on your mid-term Algebra exam. It almost sent you back a grade had you not had at least a few math skills in your brain.
And now she was the one sharing a banquet table with you.
Running out of small talk in less than a minute and a half, you were rescued by people on either side of you, getting sloshed and proclaiming the evening as the best of their lives.
From across the table; Janet, the former President of the Book Club, eyed you and emphatically exclaimed her surprise at seeing two people who hated each other, twenty years later, at the reunion sitting at a table together.
It brought immediate glances from the rest of the table and reminders, along with chuckles and hoots.
Glynnis wasn’t in on the joke – neither were you. But she was the one who burst into tears and jumped up from the table, bolting to the Ladies Room.
Since you were wearing an adult suit, albeit stained and still wet in the wrong places, you got up and followed her, planting yourself outside the restroom door.
When she finally emerged, well into the crowded dance floor stage, you stopped her and did your best Marcus Welby, asking her what the problem was.
With just enough Almaden Truth Serum flowing through her veins she confessed; she was madly in love with you since 8th grade. But she was convinced you thought she was ugly and ignored her. Not to mention the fact that she was terrified to say anything to you about how she felt. She couldn’t get up the nerve; rejection and all. So she decided to channel all that love into resentment and do things that would make you notice her. Since you didn’t like her anyway, the least she could do was make you not forget her.
To her credit, she was great at that.
To your credit you sighed and shook your head. You never got a chance to assemble feelings for her because you were too annoyed at her attempts at getting your attention. Otherwise; she was never ugly. If she looked awkward as a 14 year old, she grew into her looks – although Vogue Magazine material she was not. She didn’t pretend to be. But you freely admit despite everything, at 38 she was pretty.
You took a deep breath and suggested heading out of the banquet room to the Hotel bar and dialing back the clock twenty years.
The next morning you woke up to a hand smacking your face. It was a boy – maybe ten. He wanted to know if you drank coffee. He stepped back when he saw the wide-eyed expression on your face. Who was this kid? How did he get there? Where are you? How did YOU get here?
Glynnis informed you it was Arthur; her son. You wound up at her place – she’s divorced. Were you a fan of oatmeal with bananas?
Later, driving home with the car stereo blasting, rain cascading down on your windshield and the wiper blades in perfect sync with the beats, you kept thinking to yourself how baffling it all was. How you could stick with the wrong impression for twenty years – how life makes little or no sense – you wonder if it happens to other people.
It has to – It’s life and it’s jammed to capacity with surprises.
And here’s 90 minutes worth of MARS-FM from March 1992.
