Ten Year Trepidation

Getting ready for a class reunion, Grosse Pointe Blank style.

Tomorrow, Sara and I fly back to Minnesota, for our tour of the midwest. It’s not going to be quite as interesting and heavily-covered as Obama’s tour of the middle east, but we’re hoping that it’ll be close. Ostensibly, it’s a trip back home to see family, friends and attend my 10-Year High School reunion. Two of those things I’m sure will be fun. The other…I’m anxious.

I’ve slowly come to terms with the idea that I’m ten years older than I was ten years ago. It’s taken some time and patience, but it’s happened. Now, I have a short amount of time to come to terms with the fact that I have to face all of these people that I thought I’d never see again. It’s troublesome.

Sure, I’ve kept in touch, through e-mail and IM with some friends and it’ll be great to see them in person again. The rest, well, I have a bit of a morbid facination about seeing and conversing with them once again. The vast majority of my graduating class falls into this group. I’m not trying to degrade them as people or belittle their accomplishments in life or anything at all. I’m sure that most of them are very good, kind people living good, kindly lives. It’s just that I really don’t care so much.

Truth of the matter is, I’d be hard-pressed to remember a fair amount of their names. I’ll sit there and listen to the story of their life and everything, ask questions in the right spots and laugh and nod, but after awhile, all of the information just kind of washes over you, you get full and you just stop caring. You go on autopilot and zone out. I know that sounds utterly heartless and elitest, but you know that you’ve felt the exact same way when you’ve been at a party. After awhile, you stop having a good time and drop into survival mode.

Hopefully, it doesn’t come to this…it’s not me.

But, I’m going. I’m traveling 1500 miles on the hope that it’ll be a good time. It’s an adventure, and with all adventures, there will be surprises. I might run into someone I’d totally forgotten about and really reconnect and that’d be great. I look forward to that. In the meantime, I best get my affairs in order. It’s going to be one interesting week…