Went to my ten year high school reunion in Cleveland this weekend, which was a ton of fun but also rather surreal. Everywhere I looked was someone who kind of looked like someone I used to know, but in this case they actually were the person I used to know. A highlight of the reunion was receiving an award for following up my “most likely to win a gold medal” accolade as a senior by getting beat eight years later by a 66 year old woman in the San Diego marathon — next time I’m definitely not going to fill out the pre-reunion questionnaire.
Aside from seeing Caitlin, Amy, Rob, Chris, and the rest of the gang, I got a chance to talk to a lot of other people that I hardly knew during high school. For some of those folks we were just filling an awkward moment where we happened to be standing near one another, but for others I really enjoyed the conversation and regretted not having known them better. And of course, with most of the old group of friends it was like nothing had really changed — before even saying hello to Rob we were giving him crap about his parking, and the group at Tommy’s quickly glossed over the obligatory “where are you and what are you doing” questions and launched into the more important matters of how many milkshakes and brownie monsters we should order.
Another thing that was weird about coming back was all of the things I didn’t realize I missed. People have a lot more space in the Midwest than they do in the cities of California, and everything is really, really green. In addition, stuff like Bob Evans, seeing people smoking in public places, and the Duck Pond’s killer attack geese induced a weird sort of deja-vu/nostalgia that I hadn’t been expecting.
Today I slept in and drank a ton of coffee to work off the slight hangover, then met up with some of my college friends who I hadn’t seen in years. Now on the flight home I’ve got my first airborn celebrity sighting as I’m sitting two rows behind Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob). All in all a great weekend.