Ten years!

Last weekend, amid all the 4th of July festivities, was my 10-year high school reunion. I had a blast! We have a really friendly class, and it was great to chat with all the people I loved chatting with back in the day.
It was also a learning experience.
I learned that:
- I was not the only one who had a great time in Middle School. It turns out that most of us (or at least those of us chatting at the reunion) had a fun time and a lot of friends. As Leah Gardner put it, "Sure, it was awkward as hell," but it wasn't the horrible place so many movies portray. Good! I'd started to think maybe I was one of the mean ones, since I didn't remember anyone picking on me!
- 2009 was a good year for babies. I think just about everyone who had a child had one born that year.
- Spouses LOVE high school reunions. In fact, Kevin thought it was so marvelous that he wanted me to share the experience with more people. So he graciously donated his ticket to the second night to my friend Sheri Freestone. Kevin would have had a fun time, he assured me, but it might mean a little bit more to someone else.
- I'm a great conversation starter. If your answer to, "So, where are you these days?" is, "I'm unemployed and live with my parents," anyone can top that!
- Whatever! Once the conversation started, I have a pretty good story myself. ("Well, yeah, we'll be living overseas, pretty much anywhere the United States has an embassy....")
- Cash bars are complicated things. Apparently you can walk up and ask for a glass of cranberry juice, and they give it to you free of charge. But you have to pay for a can of soda or a water bottle. I'm still confused.
- Neil Narang is Indian. I literally had no idea until Saturday night when Julia Sorenson asked him something about arranged marriages in India. Then I noticed that, yes indeed, he does look remarkably and entirely South Asian. I wonder what else I've missed over the years....
- Arranged marriages in India these days are more like arranged blind dates. There's more freedom in them than it sounds.
- Voting for your Senior Class President actually does mean something. Becca Fellers Jones may not have known it, but that was more than just a one-year position. Ten years later, here she is, hosting a reunion that falls on her first anniversary, and she's focused entirely on making sure everyone had a great time. We did, and you're great! I was very impressed that on the Friday night BBQ, instead of hiring a caterer, Becca made all the food herself so she could save more money and make a bigger donation to cancer research on behalf of our class. She was incredibly selfless the whole weekend-- and doing all the work leading up to it!
I had a blast! I didn't take any pictures, although other people did and I thought they'd have posted them to facebook already.
(Funny story: we did have one (and only one) raving drunk guy show up. He started out the evening by taking pictures of everyone and yelling inappropriate things to get everyone to look at him. Oh, and he was wearing an atrocious t-shirt with large bosoms on the front and a thong on the back. Classy....)