the offWhites

I graduated from high school in 1999 (can you guess what our “class song” was? yeah). It doesn’t seem like that long ago, except for a few things.

Thing 1:
My baby sister graduated last year and is now a freshman in college.

Thing 2:
My husband’s 10-year reunion has already come and gone, and mine is on the distant (but viewable) horizon.

Thing 3:
Lots of my old friends are parents or about to be. This, I think, is the thing that catches me off-guard the most often. Friends from high scool or college, who I haven’t talked to in years (who I only know through myspace and facebook these days), are all having kids.

Um, okay, Lisbeth. Why do we care?

I don’t know. But you’re still reading, right?

Anyway, a friend from middle and high school left a comment a couple of posts back. She said

We’re going to Anne and Brian’s NYE fiesta for a bit tonight, and I keep wondering if we’ll all be in a room together again someday.

It’s a good question, Chris. I mean, when was the last time we were all in the same place together? Graduation? I know that it’s been a long time since I’ve even seen Anne or Brett - at Anne’s wedding, probably, and I hardly saw her there, weddings being what they are.

So, yeah. Maybe this is just me missing home in a general sense, but I do miss the friendships I used to have with all these people. Myspace and facebook may be passable facimilies for friendship (well, not myspace so much), but they’re not the same. I miss the easy groups of girlfriends I had in high school and in college. It’s not like I don’t have friends now - I have Seth, of course, and I’ve made a few really good friends here in Taiwan - but it isn’t the same. I don’t know that it ever can be, though. Friendships like those thrive on time and shared experience, so until I’m in a job that has pockets of time to bond with people (which is SO not what I’ve got in my current job), I’m sort of stuck. I was close at my last job (Hi Sue! Hi Megan! Anyone else reading this down in P-burg?), but I left after only a few years.

Uh. Oh, my, I sort of dived into my own navel there for a paragraph or two, huh? Sorry about that. So, where was I? Ah, yes - all my old friends are having babies! Holy crap, that makes me feel old or something. I’m happy for them all, though. So, if you’re reading this one, congratulations Anne, Brett, and Esther (did I forget anyone? I hope not…)!

I started reading The Man Who Folded Himself last night for the first time since high school. Unlike most things I enjoyed in my youth, it’s every bit as good as I remember, possibly even better.

The other thing that seems better: my graduating class. I found out Monday evening that my ten-year reunion is less than two weeks away. Under the circumstances I thought it prudent to find my year books and reacquaint myself with people’s names. As it turns out, there were far fewer jerks in my class than I remembered. In fact, as I looked at senior pictures, in several cases I remembered the specific incidents that caused me not to like one person or another, and laughed as I recalled I had actually been the instigator in most cases. I was the jerk then and it amuses me now, so I guess I still am.

Seriously though, I seem to recall not liking most of my classmates, but couldn’t find a single person in the yearbook I actively dislike now. I guess that’s potentially subject to change once we all meet up, but we’ll just have to wait to find that out for certain.