Thanks-but-no-thanks-giving.

[penfield]

The Webster High School Class of 1995 has scheduled its Ten-Year Reunion Extravaganza for Friday, November 25, 2005. A cursory glance at your calendar will tell you that this is the Friday immediately after Thanksgiving -- America's officially designated "Family Time" -- allowing participants to wrap all their bitter recriminations and feelings of unfulfilled personal potential into one fun-filled weekend.

There were some who objected to this timing, most vociferously arealariel, who carried her complaint just short of suggesting that reunion organizer Meghan had the intelligence quotient of quiche^[1]. The other non-Thanksgiving option was a random summer weekend, which might not garner the same attendance level but would be at least slightly less snowy.

Initially, it was my plan to recuse myself from this delusionally sentimental, blatantly voyeuristic cluster-fuck. I still keep in pretty good contact with those friends who were truly meaningful to me anyway, I rationalized, and I had seen Grosse Pointe Blank too many times to imagine the event as any sort of idyllic homecoming.

And I admit, I am somewhat wary of any situation in which I am asked to compare the size of my resume with anyone else's. Call it envy, pride, insecurity, whatever. There is a weird, counter-intuitive process that my ego entertains, in which the opinions of strangers and shirttail acquaintances speak louder than the opinions of close friends and confidants. Perhaps I will explore this phenomenon more fully on this blog at some later time; all you need to know is that I care more about the opinion of Meghan than I probably should. And anyway, I am not a particularly savvy self-promoter. If I have to spend thirty seconds hearing about Matt Chatfield's BMW without taking a sledgehammer to his groin, I might just explode.

That said, high school was not an entirely unenjoyable era for me, and the thought that some of my friends might be there to view the wreckage of the Amtrak Nostalgia Express makes it sound like a reasonably entertaining evening. Besides, I'm going to be in Rochester for Thanksgiving anyway, right? To snub the reunion when I'm right there would seem egregiously spiteful, even for me.

Except I talked to my parents this past weekend. See, they were supposed to go to the Dominican Republic^[2] for vacation in April of this year, but they had to cancel their trip because the cat needed emergency surgery or therapy or grooming or something. Long story, apparently. So they rescheduled their Caribbean vacation ... for Thanksgiving.

Let's put aside the fact that this leaves me without a home for Thanksgiving dinner, or an observed family birthday celebration, for that matter. These facts are not insignificant, except insofar as this question goes: Should I make the trip back home to spend Thanksgiving by myself in an empty house and go to my high school reunion, or should I just scrap the whole reunion idea altogether and find someplace I really want to be for the holiday?

Should Jason go to his high school reunion?
	Yes. Enjoying the company of old friends, and mocking the lives of old enemies, is worth an otherwise boring trip to Webster.
	No. Reunions are dorky, artificial reminders of the glory days that have passed you by. Go to Hawaii instead.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

And remember, this is for posterity, so please, be honest.

Comments

[2]

[enchanted-pants.livejournal.com]

[2] As devout readers of the Jason Hammersla Files will know, I had an earth-shaking but ultimately fruitless crush on one Miss Domenica for the virtual entirety of my developmental years. In ninth grade computer class with Mr. Schlegel, we were doing this big database project based on all the nations of the world. The Dominican Republic was one of the nations, of course, and for my own jollies I changed the name of the database record to say "Domenican Republic," in honor of my adored. Mr. Schlegel ended up deducting points for that, and I got a 98 on the project.

Miss Domenica is expected to attend the reunion.