memory lane this past saturday was my ten year high school reunion. i won't bore you with exclamations and proclamations about how it doesn't seem like ten years ago, blah blah. i can easily believe that it's been ten years since high school -- i mentally exited out of high school long before that. what i can't wrap my mind around is the fact that i'm already six years out of college. i still have, essentially, the mentality and lifestyle of a college student. no great responsibilities, no family of my own, no pets, no ownership of anything larger than a toaster, the most consistent (and important) bill i pay is my cell phone one.

me and george had talked often of making sure that we attended our high school reunion. first, a bit of background. we were fortunate enough to attend a prestigious (and overpriced) private school that did its part turning us into positive, integral, members of society -- she went to state school and i ended up, more or less, dropping out of college.

george wanted to attend the reunion mainly to catch up on some gossip, create some gossip, that kind of thing. i wanted to go because it might make good fodder for future comparison points -- and my auto-biography. plus, how often do you have high school reunions? i also wanted to see who exactly all these people i spent so many years with were. the school was k-12; we attended from fifth grade on, which translates into roughly seven years together.

our graduating senior class only numbered eighty or so individual names resonate with us through the years, even as the memory of exactly who they are fade. so, we wanted to go to a reunion to see how everyone turned out. and by "see," i mean just that. we didn't really want to "hear" or "talk," just "see." i mean, heaven forbid telling your old high school friends what you do now and how your life has gone.

then again, i can't really call any of these people "friends" since i can't recall any lasting conversations or moments from my high school career. i mean, i must have done something all that time right? sure i had a few good friends but near the back end of high school (right around the time girls popped up into our geeky radar) i stopped hanging around with them. i wonder what i did my junior and senior years. i didn't interact with anyone, or much of anything, that's for sure.

i remember middle school much better than high school. middle school had role playing game lunches, vicious sports played on the lawn, sleepovers on the weekends, and assorted little distractions. high school was a blur. so i wanted to relive high school for just one night, to see if any of these people would recognize me (in the metaphysical, not literal, sense) and to see if maybe i had missed out on hanging out with some incredibly cool people.

so where were we come saturday night? george was at the movies at the new mall in san francisco, i think i was watching the last season of sex and the city. we tried to go, we really did. but i work weekends now, and flying down to san diego to attend a reunion of people i don't really know seemed extravagant. without me, there was no way george was going -- thus, no ten year reunion. i did try, at the last moment, to convince some friends to go to the location and do some spying for us. unfortunately, nobody was up to the task. apparently friends -- high school or otherwise -- are totally undependable.

so i staged a little reunion in my mind, i tried to google everyone's name i could remember. i figured this was more "me," and more efficient and less stressful than trying to talk to someone over a contrived reunion dinner. what exactly were we going toremininsce about anyway? i didn't interact with anyone in high school. i think i was a ghost in the shell. how this happened i'm not sure but i'm sure i had hardly an impact on anyone outside of a handful of friends and teachers. i wonder what anyone in high school thought of me. i guess i'll never know. maybe next reunion?

what did i find out on my grand tour of the internet:

one girl is, i think, some sort of writer or photographer. freelance or gainfully employed by the red cross, i'm not sure. hard to tell, semi-common name.

the grandson of the owner of the chargers is, predictably, working for the chargers. his bio makes him sound like a social and athletic star in high school. my memory isn't terribly clear, but that's not exactly what i recall about him. i could be wrong.

i think one person is dead, from skin cancer. this is hearsay, since i heard it from someone else.

one girl who went on to play basketball averaged 0.1 points and 0.9 rebounds per game in her sophmore year. didn't make the wnba from what i could tell.

one guy, whose ponytail i modeled my own after in sixth grade, is either in jail in israel or a college professor. neither would surprise me.

my crush through most of middle school and into high school. i'd googled this one long ago and discovered among other things that she now works for a company that i used to work for a few summers ago. she's now happily married -- many congrats -- and pictorially documenting much of her life for our viewing pleasure. she's also our (mainly george's) source for high school gossip.

encounters with former high school classmates in the last ten years:

the summer after graduation, i ran into one of the popular girls at the local chiropractor's office. i'm sure we exchanged pleasantries. i never went back to that chiropractor -- unrelated reasons i'm sure.

at the local mall, in a structure store, two classmates looking at men's vests. i turned right around and left.

during my freshman year at umich, i saw in the cafeteria, arguably the most popular girl in our class. she had changed her mind at the last minute and had decided to attend michigan. she said "hi" to me first. i'm not sure what i would have done if i had seen her first. probably grunt. never saw her again. did find her website though recently. she's a real estate agent. go blue.

in the movies just a few short months ago, i sat directly behind two guys who would have recognized me, by name if not by face. i hid and tried to avoid them at all costs. although i would have wanted to know why they were hanging out.

one of the few friends i recall from high school came out with us once for some reason. he had gone from short and high pitched voice to super tall and not high pitched voice. kind of a huge change. his brother -- who we used to play some rpgs with -- is now a world class animator apparently. wow.

and that's it. goodbye high school. hello college? oh wait, college is still right here, lurking.