High School Reunion

This weekend we went to Moose’s high school reunion. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go but I told him he should at least go to one and then he can skip all of the others if he wants to. Neither Moose nor I participate in social media much. This blog is the extent of my forays and Moose doesn’t even do that. Neither of us have kept in contact with many people from high school. As Saturday drew closer I realized I was getting nervous. My own reunion will be next year, if they have one, and the more I thought about mine the more nervous I got for Moose’s. I mean what if people have all kinds of expectations and I don’t meet them. I had this irrational fear that when I showed up with Moose they were going to look at us and think “He settled low.” Before anyone leaps to tell me how wrong I am remember I said the fear was irrational.

In preparation for the reunion we submitted a picture and a little block of text. (You may get the idea of where this is going if you’ve read Sunday’s story.) I was just being funny and wrote in vague terms what was going on. Very short. Not really to the point. But it made Moose laugh when I read it to him. The picture we sent was from last year when Moose had grown his hair out. Moose has never had long hair before. It is usually short enough that he doesn’t even have to part it.

At the reunion we were sitting at a side table, because we weren’t having dinner, and some of Moose’s acquaintances came over. They talked to us for a bit and then the slide show started. The first slide was a cute family with a few sentences of overview. The slides got longer from there. Some of the slides had so much text that I couldn’t read it fast enough. The information covered everything. This is not a bad thing. If you haven’t seen friends for ten years there is a lot of information to cover. Trying to share that much information without being boastful is neigh impossible. I knew a few of the people but not many. As the show continued Moose and I realized we were looking forward to the his slide. No one else had a slide quite like it. When it popped up even the people sitting at our table were a little taken aback by the picture. There were a few laughs and then it switched. We left after the slide show and headed home. I honestly don’t know if we will be going to another one. (Though we’ve already planned the idea of Moose showing up with his hair long enough to be in a pony tail. Roughly 18 months of growing time.)

I may have a reunion next year and I am still nervous. I still have the irrational fear that when people see me they will think I haven’t accomplished anything. Which is ridiculous. Maybe I’ll dye my hair blue again. That could have some promise. And when people ask me what I do, I’ll tell them. “I do everything I can to be happy.”