Thursday, November 02, 2006

"20 Years Now...

where'd they'd go
20 years now
I don't know
Sit and wonder sometimes
Where they've gone."

Milestones come and milestones go but if there was ever a gateway to mid-life, would it not be the 20 year high school reunion? What makes the 20th stand apart? Think about it;

a) This is the first reunion in which I have been out of high school more years than the my high school graduation age.

b) This is the last reunion that I will be in my thirties.

c) At the next reunion, the majority of my classmates will be done having children

d) At the next reunion, some of my classmates may be grandparents.

e) At the next reunion, DVE will be playing modern music (yeah right! More on this in a moment).

Is it some type of cruel irony that makes our reunions the weekend following Thanksgiving? I realize the reunion committee is trying to get maximum attendance by holding it then, but if you're one of those people that feel like they need to slim down before the reunion then your Thanksgiving is effed, isn't it? You either drive yourself nuts by not eating all that good food or you over indulge with everyone else and feel like a fat bastard. Needless to say, two days prior to seeing people you haven't seen in a long long time. If you take the not eating route, you actually get screwed twice because after the reunion you're wondering why you sacrificed your Thanksgiving for all those other fat bastards that you haven't seen in a long long time.

WDVE was playing Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne when I left in 1986 and they're still playing Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne 20 years later. I feel like I'm in a musical time warp when I reach Morgantown and can start to pick up DVE. How funny is it to have the car radio on scan and hear "Bang your head, metal health'll drive you mad!"? It wasn't like it was "Metal Monday" or some other lame radio station crap , it was a Friday night. Its like they're still using their 1980s playlist. Just for fun, I thought I tune to 105.9 WAMO and see if they were playing Grand Master Flash or something.

My oldest son had to inquire "Dad, why do they say bang your head"? I said Cooper, your daddy and the rest of the 80s teenagers were the last segment of a generation that believed that world didn't revolve around them. Their problems, no matter how serious, were nothing in compared to the problems of the rest of world. Banging one's heads was simply a symbolic gesture of said stifled frustration. I went on to tell him that we didn't believe in all that "woe is me" teenage angst crap . We went to school when teachers like Mudry or Dufalla would paddle your ass if you looked at them wrong. And you sure as hell weren't going to go home and tell your folks about it because then you'd get it again. Despite all your best efforts to the contrary, the schools were going to educate you. They didn't care if they flunked your dumbass three times over, you either learned or you dropped out, self esteem be damned.

School and life in general is a competition son, awards shouldn't be given for coming in last. We didn't cry about it and we sure as hell weren't going to shoot up the school over it either. You didn't like something, you got over it. You see, we had problems but so did the whole effing world. Hell, our schools still had bomb fall out shelters, we thought the USSR was going to nuke our asses and destroy the world thirty times over, we thought we could get AIDS from a handshake, we just knew the ozone layer would be depleted and we all die of skin cancer and we would have to move south to avoid the ice age that would cover half of North America in ice.

It was at that point I realized I had lost my audience as Cooper had donned his headphones and was intently watching SpongeBob. I should know better than to overanalyze a situation and rant to a six year old.

If you haven't been up to the Trinity Point Shopping Plaza, you really owe it to yourself to get over there and test your driving prowess. You see, when they planned that parking lot they used this high tech computer software program that actually mapped the random routes of 10 year olds driving bumper cars to use as a template for their parking lot. First you spin the steering wheel hard to the right, then back to left then right, "watch out for that car!". If I only had one of those big black cushions mounted in the middle of the steering wheel, I think I would've purposely taken someone out.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I never blogged but I know exactly what you are saying.. Brought back many memeories as you know. I enjoyed the 20th and I agree... We haven't changed a bit ..other than the 20 years, but the rest need to chime in and explain the reasons we were not able to identify them.