Dispatch From My 20-Year High School Reunion

"Will you n Taylor make an appearance at this 20yr reunion on Friday or do a hard pass? 😅"

Attached was a screenshot of a Facebook Event. This was the first I had heard about this, as I had not logged into my personal Facebook in several years. Still, The Social Network's ubiquity in the lives of those who were in college waiting for that thefacebook.com invite meant that it is still the best place to reach other millennials two decades later.

Your first reaction when you hear about a 20-year anniversary is disbelief. That you could have lived a life so long, and how you don't feel almost 40. But you are. The next is "Well, why would I want to go to this?" I didn't want to talk about kids and how I have a fake "Director of Digital" job title.

I haven't talked to most of these people in 20 years. I also won't talk to these people for another 20 years. What's the harm? At worst, I go and awkwardly waste three hours of the life I'm not doing much with anyways. At best, I commit seppuku and change the dynamic of this group forever, forming bonds where there were none. Seemed like a win-win.

Below are my takeaways.

The best memories to share are not the big ones everyone remembers but the ones that are so inconsequential that you never even considered telling someone to begin with.

My best friend in first grade was there. We weren't close later in school, but we did gymnastics together, and the only time I ever rode a school bus after school was to go to his house. I was terrified, as I was a car line kid. Would these latchkey savages accept me? Or tear me to pieces?

I told him this tidbit, and we laughed. Then he reminded me I ate 5 popsicles at his house that day. We'll probably never speak again in our lives, but we'll always have that minutiae that has somehow stayed in our brains for 30 years.

No one is too cool to reminisce

Someone jokingly asked "Whose going to bring the yearbook?" in the Facebook group. I knew that person would be me. You see, my mother is a hoarder. It's a problem until you need to locate all your old WCW, WWF, and ECW wrestling shirts, and she knows exactly where to find it.

I knew she had all my yearbooks from elementary through high school in a single, heavy-ass bin in their storage unit. So, I made my way to the storage unit. Right there in Section H, Row 1 underneath a tub of CDs, and some novelty watches—Starfox, Super Mario Bros, an original 1992 Watch Boy—was that bin.

I brought the yearbook, and some old school newspapers since I had them. Throughout the night, that was the biggest attraction. The person who thanklessly organized the event came up to say they appreciated what a huge hit it was. What she might not have understood, but I did, is that above all else people love to remember some guys, and that men love to show their significant others how svelte they used to be.

My personal favorite was looking at the historical events section wondering why we needed to include the Murder of Dru Sjodin in a yearbook.

Also, yearbooks are the best historical record we have as far as pop culture. However, I felt like I was going crazy because in ours they had a section that highlighted popular shows like Friends and Frasier... and also a show starring Neil Patrick Harris called Stark Raving Mad that I had never heard of and am not entirely sure exists. It's an NBC property and not even on Peacock.

Here's some other fun things that I found in the memorabilia storage bins that my mother has inexplicably kept:

1. Lowe's Receipt for the dropcloth I used to make the backdrop for my Senior Project Stand-Up Comedy Show.
2. The remainder of the 2,000 ticket roll used to give people entry into my Stand-Up Comedy Show.
3. A DVD of the Stand Up Comedy Show, where I had programmed the DVD Menu to use a Fruity Loops Beat I created.
4. Parking Ticket from Colonial Life Center for when I played in the state AAA boy's basketball championship.
5. Recruitment Letter to play Division II basketball at Coker College
6. My original College Board AP Grade Report card showing I got 2's in AP US History and AP Statistics but a 5 in in AP English Literature and a 4 in AP English Language
7. Various professional basketball team photographs
   1. One with me palming two basketballs and wearing jewelry
   2. One with me and two other teammates trying our best to look intimidating
   3. One with me wearing a teammate's chain and spinning the ball on my middle finger, with the entire team behind me.
8. This mousepad
   

Whatever stuff went on back then would land people in jail these days

Two former cool teachers showed up to the shindig. One was one of my favorite English teachers, Mrs. Williams, and and other one, Mr. Smith, was a science teacher and cross country coach.

I spoke with a classmate about how we took AP Environmental Sciences with Mr. Smith. However, I was only in the class for two weeks, as I had no idea what we were learning, or what to study. All I knew is that we were slowly poisoning various fish and frogs in tanks around the room under the guise of an "environmental stress test" to see tolerance levels. I hated it.

My classmate informed me about the rest of the year where they took a field trip to the woods where they would be building the new high school the year after we graduated. I asked what they talked about or did on the field trip, and he said

"I honestly don't think we did anything. We went to the woods and all kind of agreed that these were in fact woods. And, it would be a shame to ruin this habitat for a new school. Then later that night a few of us ate dinner at Mr. Smith's house, and he had this little wooden figurine that when you pulled its pants down it would pee."

😵‍💫 I'm sorry. What?

I think Caley has a picture of me peeing it into Sims' mouth.

Mental note. Ask Caley about every bit of this.

Smith kept telling us how much he hated the shed in his backyard. So, the next morning, Sims and I went out there with an axe and started wailing on it. His girlfriend showed up and got really mad at us, and then he told us to leave.

These are the facts, as they were presented to me. From this description I thought

1. Glad I got out of that class. I didn't need a third 2 on my AP report card.
2. This story is one uncovered secret away from being a Netflix mini scandal doc.
3. No way you could get away with this now.

The way I had it sorted in my head: Field Trip, then some students (boys and girls) had dinner at Mr Smith's house, and there was a sleepover ("so the next morning"), then some light destruction of property before school.

I found Caley and asked her to confirm that there was in fact a little peeing boy figurine, and she informed me that there was. A picture did exist, and that she could probably find it. She denied that there was a sleepover as far as she knew.

I went to Mr. Smith because at this point this saga had consumed my evening. I needed to know the truth.

Uhh yeah. We did do a field trip to the woods. It wasn't a sleepover though. I invited some of the students over for a Spaghetti Dinner. Then Jay showed back up in the morning with an axe and I got in really big trouble with my girlfriend at the time.

Spaghetti Dinner. I invited some of the students over for a Spaghetti Dinner. Spaghetti Dinner. Spaghetti Dinner. Spaghetti Dinner. Student Spaghetti Dinner.

This phrase has occupied my brain the better part of the last week. It was not "I invited some students over for dinner, and by the way spaghetti was served." It was "I invited some of the students over for a Spaghetti Dinner." Spaghetti Dinner implies formality, custom. Spaghetti Dinner is an event.

Caley held up her end of the bargain, and produced the artifact confirming it was all true. In 2004, Shirtless Student Spaghetti Dinner was normal. In 2024, it's a Netflix true-crime-scandal doc you add to your list but never watch.

No matter what you think you've made of your life, by virtue of going to the reunion, you will not be the biggest failure.

Many of my classmates have plazas and statues that brandish their great-grandfather's names dotted around town. I, on the other hand, do not. I also haven't done too much exciting with the one life I've been granted.

Did some of my classmates become engineers due to their intellect? Yes. Did some other ones have family companies they were able to slide into and immediately be successful after college? Yes. All of it's fine. Who cares. And, even if I was the lowest totem pole person there, I showed up.

You know who didn't show up? A classmate, and one of my very best friends and basketball teammates, who was raided by a state task force and arrested last year on Child Sexual Abuse Material Charges.

Two classmates came rushing up to me an hour into the event and flanked me on either said with a little more glee in their eyes than I had seen previously. They put their arms around me and said "We gotta ask you something. Did you know about Chris?" It was the Lou Ratchet video in real life.

I had no idea! Thankfully, they told me, because I can foresee a comedy of errors situation where I texted him the next day like "Hey, man! Missed you at the reunion. Let's get lunch!"

I could not be a politician no matter how much good I wanted to do or pure my heart

I heard stories about myself that I had forgotten. Below are the ones I'm OK relaying.

1. During a wheelchair basketball game, I blocked a kid so hard he fell out of his wheelchair.
2. I hit an underclassmen with my Camry with enough force to bump them up onto the hood.
   1. In my defense, they were standing in my parking spot.
3. With the motion you use to skip stones on top of water, I launched a Bo Round at a truck bed full of underclassmen and hit one square in the face from 10 yards out.
4. I was once suspended from the basketball team due to an extensive bullying campaign I orchestrated against another student where whenever someone said their name people would reply "SUCKADICK."
   1. In my defense, he started it by being overly familiar and putting his bare ass on me in our hotel room at Youth In Government. I am nothing if not petty.

If I ever wanted to live a public life it would take exactly one subfolder in someone's google drive to bring me down.