Has It Been 20 Years Already?

I got an e-mail the other day about my upcoming twenty year high school reunion. The fact that it has been twenty years blows my mind. I don’t think of myself as that old, but reality is reality. While I have both good and bad memories of my four year sentence at Argo, I have decided to skip this reunion.

I went to my tenth. After being in the room for five minutes, I instantly regretted my decision to attend. It was at Mama Lugi’s in Bridgeview. I went basically because my friends Zar and Chuck were going and they talked me into coming along. So, I spent fifty bucks a plate for me and my then girlfriend and wound up sitting at a table with Zar, his wife, Chuck, his wife and me and my girlfriend. I talked to a couple of people I was curious to see what happened to and that was about it.

I remembered thinking while I was there, that there is a reason I don’t talk to these people anymore. I really didn’t like most of them and have very little in common with them. I was one of the few in the crowd who wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids. I remember talking to one girl who told me that her son was in fifth grade and at the time it blew my mind. Not that there is anything wrong with getting married and having kids, but I wanted more out of life then that and I always have. I always felt that you really never had any personal freedom until you are eighteen. To trade that in at such an early age and be tied down with a spouse and some offspring seemed foolish. Maybe that is me being selfish, and if it is so be it.

I had my own crew I hung with at Argo. We were not the most popular or part of the biggest click but you know what, who gives a shit. At the time it was me, Doyle, Chris Dusza, and Zar. Eventually Chuck and Dell joined the pack. (Which strangely enough coincided with Dusza hanging out with a different crowd.) I wouldn’t trade the friendships I made with Chuck, Zar and Dell that I made at Argo for anything. For it to be twenty years later and we still keep in touch is very rare. So for as much as Argo may have sucked at times, I made some lifelong friends there, so it can’t be all bad.

In our group, we had our own sensibilities and our own likes and dislikes. That is what bonded us. We devolved our own click and it grew and grew and today, because of that I have a set of true friends that I would do anything for. I don’t need to pay fifty bucks a plate to have inane conversations with people I really have nothing in common with.

If they had the reunion at a bar or something then, maybe I would go. But it being in a hall there is no way. I go to enough weddings where I am forced to sit at a table with strangers and make boring small talk. I have no need to go to some hall, pay out my ass for rubber chicken all for the pleasure to see which stuck up girls got the fattest.

When I weigh all the positives and negatives about attending it really is no contest. Sure, I would like to see if Doyle and Dusza show up so, I could talk to them and maybe re-establish some contact. There are other parts of me that are curious to see what has become of some of my classmates. But as I stated above the other parts of the reunion would annoy me way too much. So, I have made a deal with Chuck that if we make it to our 50^th reunion then we will attend. That leaves me off the hook for thirty years, when I will be into my sixties. God willing I will make it that long and if I do I will see you there ACHS class of 1987.