June 13, 2006 - Old Times

Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

June 13, 2006 - Old Times

The Gryphon in high school

The Gryphon's 21st high school reunion was just down the road from the motel where we were staying, at a big Sheraton Hotel. We stopped at the front desk to ask where the event was taking place, and they directed us to it.

Meanwhile, people were arriving after us, wearing suits, clutching yearbooks, so we knew we were in the right place.

We found the reunion, although it was confusing at first because we ran into a bunch of people in a hallway, gathering for some other event. We realized they were the wrong group of people, because they were the wrong age mix. There were children and senior citizens in addition to 30-somethings. So we asked a hotel worker, who told us we had to make our way through the crowd and then take a right in the hallway.

The event was being held in a small banquet room, where tables, a buffet service and a dance floor had been set up. At a little window to the left, when you first came in was a bartender taking drink orders.

We were two of the first people to arrive, but fortunately, The Gryphon's buddy and his wife had already arrived, so we got to say hi to them right away. I took a photo of them together while the evening was still young and everyone was at his or her best.

The organizer had found a really neat way to do the name tags. She included their senior yearbook photos on the badge next to their name. It was funny, because you saw people peering intently at these pictures, then looking up at the faces, then looking down at the badges again to read the names as they tried to place people. Quite honestly, it had been so long I'd be surprised if anyone would recognize each other without help.

I was thrilled to see The Gryphon's photo, although he had shown it to me once before. He asked me, "What's your obsession with photos of me when I was young and geeky?" I laughed and explained that I always loved to look at pictures of people from when they were younger. It helps me to visualize their life's journey. Also, I like his sort of wry smile in the yearbook photo. It's very him.

Those of us who were guests didn't have, of course, the preprinted name tags, so we had to write our names. I decided that, just to avoid confusion, I would put on the tag why I was there. So after my name, I identified myself as The Gryphon's girlfriend. Later, in the drink line, I ran into somebody's husband who had done the same thing. We joked about how it would be fun to hide our name tags and pretend we knew people, making them sweat while they tried to figure out who we were.

I once did this unintentionally. When I was dancing with a group of women on the dance floor for a short while, one of them came up to me between songs and said, "You look so familiar."

"Well, if I do, I must look like somebody else," I told her, and explained why I was there.

The Gryphon's friend had a lot less hair but the same smile and the same eyes. Another difference was significant but not noticeable until he pointed it out. Due to surgery to remove a brain tumor, the nerves in the left side of his forehead are damaged and he can't move them. He joked that he could now do the Spock eyebrow lift really well. Fortunately, his form of cancer was operable and he's now in remission.

He introduced us to his wife, whom he had met about five years ago over an Internet dating site. The funny thing was that they discovered they lived only a mile from each other but had never met. They hit it off so well they got married two years later.

People tended to gravitate toward the open bar when they came in, and they all sort of gathered in small groups right inside the door. There was also a DJ, who oddly enough was playing more danceable tunes early in the night while people were greeting each other, socializing, having drinks and eating. When people were finally ready to dance, he was playing a lot of slower songs and songs that were neither recognizable nor danceable.

The sound system was really loud for the room we were in, and it was hard to hear people. The Gryphon's buddy had a lot of trouble hearing over the din and asked the DJ more than once to turn it down.

At the beginning of the night, people seemed to gravitate towards their original comfort zones, and you could tell which people had been the popular girls, which had been the jocks, which had been the business students. As the evening wore on, people seemed to feel more comfortable mingling.

When I got a chance, I took a photo of myself in the powder room.

Again and again, people came up to The Gryphon and said that they'd never pictured him with long hair. They'd never seen him as "a rebel." Both The Gryphon and I found this funny, considering a lot of our friends have long hair in ponytails, too. I don't know that I would consider them to be rebels. Self-proclaimed computer geeks and fanboys, maybe.

Let's do a little cast of characters of the people we encountered over the course of the evening. There was the woman who'd been in the color guard. She'd been one of the higher achieving academics, regarded as a brain. Everybody kept coming up to her and saying she looked exactly the same, mostly because she had exactly the same short, feathered hairstyle. She did make a comment about having gained weight, though.

She was wearing a dusky pink knee-length dress with a matching jacket that looked very much like something an elderly woman might wear, decorated with brocade and antique pink pearls. She even wore a matching necklace and earring set that looked like something straight out of a grandmother's jewelry box.

I hope I don't sound catty or mean. It's just that what she was wearing made her look a lot older, despite her young face. Perhaps she thought that, as a plus size person, she'd never find anything trendy or young. In that case, she ought to try a store like Lane Bryant, that specializes in trendy plus size clothing.

Don't get me wrong: she was a very nice person, but it struck me that perhaps she'd never gotten over being picked on in high school for being a brain. I know this because she mentioned it to us when we were chatting with her. I got the impression that her outfit was almost like a disguise, like a way to hide. "Don't look at me. I'm really not that interesting."

She did, however, make the rounds in the room, going up to different groups and greeting them. So at least she was making an effort to break free from her wallflower ways.

The organizer of the reunion seemed like someone who had been a class officer. She was had a very contemporary long, layred hairdo and was wearing a little black dress. She was very bubbly, and as the evening went on she got drunker and tried to pull people out on the floor. Also, she flirted with some of the guys, who seemed to find it amusing.

One guy had a very loose interpretation of semiformal. He was wearing jeans, an oversized sports jersey and a baseball cap. His friend, however, was dressed up. He was athletic and muscular and looked a lot like his high school picture.

There was one really tall, blonde woman who apparently shops in the juniors department. She's gorgeous, but the dress was a little too short, a little too young for her.

We spoke for awhile with a short guy with the same blonde feathered hair he'd had in high school. He does, however, have a mustache now. He was wearing a dark gray suit with a colorful shirt and tie, and he told them he's in the insurance business now. Because of his New Jersey accent, everything he talked about, it sounded like he was trying to be a tough guy. I thought it was funny when the guys were talking about different brands of razors and which kind they like. Not something you'd imagine a tough guy talking about.

One woman had played field hockey in high school. Compared to her picture, she looked like she'd grown up and become more womanly. As she looked through the yearbook with The Gryphon and his buddy, every picture of her showed her in a sports jersey.

While some of the women, wearing ill-fitting dresses that were either too young looking or too old-fashioned, might have looked like candidates for TLC's What Not to Wear, one woman looked like the after picture. She had a short, contemporary haircut that was really flattering on her and an elegant, knee-length black dress that was perfect for her. Compared to her high school picture, where she had big hair and feathered bangs, she was a real knockout. I talked to her for awhile. She told me that her husband had decided not to attend but she'd wanted to come and celebrate. And she sure was. She was quite the social butterfly, flitting from group to group, joking with people and then joining a group of women to dance on the dance floor.

The Gryphon pointed out a girl on whom he'd had a crush in the eighth grade but never had the nerve to ask out. Amusingly, she'd come up to him at the reunion and put her hand over her tag to make him guess. He knew right away, which surprised her.

There was also the woman who had been the star of every high school production and had been in the arts program at the high school. We spoke to her for awhile. Turns out that she gave show business a try for a short while and then entered another career path. She was currently in marketing. According to The Gryphon, she looked just like she had in high school, but I had to take his word for it, because her name tag had fallen off by the time we talked to her.

We had a good time with The Gryphon's buddy and his wife, as we sat at our table and enjoyed some food, drinks and later coffee. His buddy had fun talking about the mischief they used to get into. Now considering they were, by their own admission, the braniacs of the school, their form of mischief was relatively innocuous. It consisted of things like finding the most efficient way to toilet paper houses and experimenting with fireworks in his buddy's backyard.

His buddy did tell me that The Gryphon was never an active instigator of any of these events but would hang back somewhat disapprovingly as his other friends followed through with them.

He also told me some embarrassing things about him, such as the fact that The Gryphon's driver's license had a mistake on it, listing him as female! No one noticed until he was pulled over by the police one evening for a traffic ticket. As his buddy said, it was the sort of thing that could have happened to anybody, just a simple typo. Funny, nonetheless.

At one point, his buddy asked me, "Am I destroying your image of him? Should I stop?"

"Oh, no! Please go on," I said. The whole conversation was very amusing to me, since they were things I'd never heard before. I'd apparently heard only some of their high school exploits, such as a legendary graduation party.

One woman was wearing cropped white striped pants with a pink tank top. She was a firecracker, very talkative and brassy. I had some fun talking to her, meanwhile thinking to myself that in high school I would have probably been intimidated by somebody so self-confident.

When a photographer arrived to take a class picture, I got some shots of my own.

We had a nice night, despite the troubles with the DJ. It seemed like everybody had a good time.

The Gryphon's buddy and his wife announced they were leaving, and we decided to hit the road, too. We were getting tired and had to get up early to make it home in time to pick up my dog, Una. Since it was the last minute, our pet sitter had agreed to take Una overnight, on the condition that we could pick her up Sunday before a very hyper, badly behaved dog showed up. Otherwise, on top of her own three dogs, it would be too much to handle.

So we stood in the hallway for a little while, chatting and making plans to get together again, like maybe taking in a minor league baseball game in Trenton. Then it was hugs all around and we headed out.

By that point, I was getting hungry again. I'd gone easy on the buffet table, realizing I was taking in some extra calories that day. But they'd removed all the food, so I couldn't even grab another roll or something. The Gryphon said he knew just where to go.

Because it was on the way, we stopped back at our motel room and changed into casual and warmer clothing, grabbed our jackets and then drove to what used to be called the Four Seasons Diner. It's now the All Seasons Diner. Those seasons are, apparently, Winter, Summer, Fall, and Peace.

I ordered a bowl of vegetarian soup, and The Gryphon and I split an order of potato pancakes. They were more like hash browns than pancakes, but they were served with apple sauce and were tasty.

We chatted about the evening, shared observations about the people who'd attended. Then it was back to the rundown motel for some sleep.

The next morning, we got breakfast in the All Seasons Diner before heading home, so I got a picture. It looks much more like a diner at night when the red neon lights are on, because they've coated the outside with stucco, apparently going for a more sophisticated look.

We made good time driving home and arrived with time to spare to pick up Una. The pet sitter told us she'd had a bad night, waking up at 2:30 in the morning and barking at nothing. I suspect that, because we forgot to leave a blanket and toy with her this time, she thought she was there for a day trip rather than overnight. She probably thought we'd be coming home any minute and was barking at phantom noises.

But no matter. We were back now, and all of us could take a well-deserved nap. I never thought our simple furniture could seem so, well, luxurious and new!