Life School Reunion

What inspires people to attend their High School Reunions? You’re just a Before/After ad for yourself. Well, unless you go to other peoples’ High School Reunions. I’d prefer that,

“Yes, you remember me, Bob Johnson, I started a new cheer team to cheer for the cheer squad. We’d wait for them to finish their routine then…GOOOOOO Cheer Squad! Double Flip! 

You may not have recognised me because I’m hamsexual, I had my genitals replaced with ham. Great to see you again, Paula!”

I grew up watching a plethora of American High School films in which 30 year old actors starred as teen characters. Where were their parents? Perhaps they were played by dead actors. So it was a surprise to me to find that I was not Rizzo at 14. There are worst things I could do. And I was certainly no whatever Michelle Pfeiffer’s name was in the sequel. Ah, ‘Grease 2’, you really let yourself go. No slick man child picked me up on their motorbike and used my hoop earrings to steer. That’s not a metaphor.

On special occasions my Grandad would collect me in the old Ford station wagon, with Michael Crawford’s rendition of ‘Phantom’ blaring due to his mild deafness. Then I’d practise ye olde ragtime piani for the afternoon until dinner was obviously served at 5:30pm at the latest.

Granny really had a way with cuisine, usually meat and 3 veg. Her secret was steaming the vegetables for so long that they all tasted like one another. You could only tell them apart by texture. And later we’d discover that she forgot the carrots in the microwave, but that was ok. It was really ok. Sometimes, we would have sago for dessert, which also tasted like nothing, but the texture was to die for. And then on special occasions in summer we would eat tacos on the driveway. They had seasoning.

After dinner, we gathered for a screening of ‘Dad’s Army’, then I played cards with Grandad and we gambled with match sticks instead of dollar dollar bills yo.

So how am I doing, Brenda Walsh? I probably wouldn’t have blended in on ‘Beverly Hills 90210’. Why did they need to include the postcode in that title? Like, an audience would only watch it if they knew the exact location. People either had unfulfilling crushes on Dylan or Brandon. How could anyone compete with Luke Perry’s premature cavernous Star Trek forehead? Yoda with cut abs, gnarly. But ask yourself how you’d respond if it was Tori Spelling with that enormous creased brow?

I used to know the entire script of ‘Romy and Michelle’s Highschool Reunion’. The leading actors were in their late 30s, playing people in their late 20s who played people in their teens. It was such a journey. That film came out the year I finished high school, so I was just really killing time till the reunion when I could re enact the whole thing. I invented post-its, I hope everyone’s babies are monkeys, and exit with some Cyndi Lauper free dancing to signify that I’m comfortable with who I am.

No. 10 years later, it was a cocktail dress theme with lamb chops circulating as hors d’oeuvres. Grease, the Musical. I couldn’t hold my drink but I didn’t need to reapply lip gloss. We could have saved the wait staff and feasted off a zebra carcass on the ground. It’s always the zebra. 

So I wore jeans and a fitted yellow top. My house mate and apparent bestie offered to do my make up. More yellow. Who wears yellow make-up? I looked like Big Bird with jaundice. Fortunately, people still recognised me because I also looked like Big Bird with jaundice as a teenager. Some lucky people just get acne. Not me, yellow feathers, a felt beak, and unexplained enthusiasm. Well, they’ve all faded with time.

There is another high school reunion approaching, like some abandoned ghost ship on a foggy night. I am not interested in being a 30 something, playing a 20 something, playing a teen. I’m not interested in being a before and after. I’m a now.

Female celebrities like to ask, “What advice would you give to your 16 year old self?”

Well, my answer would be nothing. I’m not 16. My 16 year old self would have said, “What the Fuck?”, because WTF wasn’t a thing yet. I think the question should be, “What would you tell your now self?” because that’s when it is. And after deep contemplation the only response of advice I can offer is, 

‘We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dingo dong, remembered forever like shoo bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom. Chang chang, changity chang shoobop, that’s the way it should be, wha ooooh, yeah.’