Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The Birds and Bees of Planning Your High School Reunion

How an Awkward Question Becomes a Committee

The Committee:

Many of you probably wake up every day with the thought "I wonder what moronic, thankless, and time consuming project Juj has gotten herself entangled with today?" I know you do that because someone on my Facebook page, and I haven't figured out who, keeps asking me that question relentlessly: What are you doing right now, what are you doing right now? I think it might be my clever nephew who thinks I'm boring, but I'm not really sure. I answer him as often as I can, but he never is satisfied. What are you doing right now? I think I have to get one of those teddy bears that has been violated with a tiny camera to follow me around all day and shut him up.

The answer to that question would be the 20th High School Reunion Planning Committee for my alma matter, and Ivy League feeder school, West Allis Nathan Hale aka to the locals, Nathan Jail. I only regret that I have but one solid year of my offsprings' childhoods to give to my high school that never even bothered to tell me about taking AP courses for college credit your senior year instead of Senior Gym Badmitton and 4 study halls that became a kick ass nap/Cribbage enrichment time. Nor did they tell me you can schedule your study halls in consecutive blocks so you have a chance of getting to the good stuff in your dog-eared copy of The Thorn Birds rather than the abrupt stopping and starting according to bells spaced 20 minutes apart much like pill time in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.


Previous answers to that question would be: Furminating my dog, scrapbooking, self-taught quilting, making all the family Christmas stockings by hand when I can't sew and only have lefty scissors in my house, childbirth, Pumpkin carving with a dull serrated knife, supervising groups of au pairs (yeah, I'm supposed to comparison shop for snow globes at Winkies later and ship the best one to Croatia after I convert drachmas to dollars and use a 20% off coupon and let the head of the Russian mob "dip his beak" in the transaction; what are you doing this afternoon? just picking up groceries and attending a soccer game?) selling AmWay [they call it something else now, but don't be fooled, no one can use or divide amongst your friends one solid metric ton of generic brand Cheerios and 90 cartons of worse-than-the-store-brand generic diapers which I now use as drink coasters (that leak) 'cause my peeps don't throw stuff out see first blog, "Grandma Gukich." As for the generic AmWay Cheerios, even the local food pantry said "no thanks, we just can't move these" so I am working on hot glue gunning them to my basement walls to save on drywall--I am quite sure they are non-porous], coupon clipping, making loads of cards riddled with little rubber stamps, you get the picture. I have some spare time, but I'm tied to the house by the human ankle bracelet monitoring system we affectionately dub "kids."

Now, some of you have had a confused look on your face when you heard I committee'd up, but kept your questions to yourselves. But my rude friends, and you know who you are Tony, have said "how were you stupid enough to run for Student Council and get that life sentence?" By "Stupid" enough, I know you also meant "Popular" enough and if you have downloaded the standard application for the high school student council race it looks like this:

Name:



  • Are you Stupid Enough?





  • Are you Popular Enough?


To get on the ballot of the Student Council race, you must have a name, and answer "yes" to both questions and get at least 25 signatures of people that can swear in front of a judge that yes, they know your name and you are stupid and popular enough to organize chips and dips for 285 people you had four years to say hi to and you never did, for the rest of your natural born life.

In high school, I didn't even know 25 people so I can assure you, this was not my mistake. My mistake was innocently attending a holiday get-together at the home of a grade school pal when someone asked if we should start talking about putting together the reunion. I said the same thing I said to the Croatian snow globe fanatic when I really mean "no" which is "sure."


Disclaimer here: The 20 year Reunion Committee includes only one original member of the Student Council which I must acknowledge here is my good friend from grade school, Jill, who is the genetic mutation in the bunch for many reasons including the facts that she is most definitely not stupid but she is popular and was also voted "Best Driver" which is a life-long good skill to have as we become a society increasingly dependent on our bikes (see first blog about not speeding thru a school zone).

So a group of old school gal pals who have picked up a fondness for self torture since their high school days because they do things now that they never would have then like brow waxing, giving birth, wearing Spanx, dragged out the yearbooks, the class lists, the overflowing coffers of the generous donations to the class of '88 which totaled the amazing sum of thirty seven cents but a lot of charities were hit after 9/11, and pledged to put together the Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve of High School Reunions.

First things First--Getting Buzzed:

First, we need to get a good "buzz" going about our wonder years and get people interested. I don't know where you went to school, but at my school, it seemed like a lot of people enjoyed being buzzed all the time so it seemed like a good place to start, the buzz.

At this point, let me introduce one of my co-committee members, Kim. Kim started cold calling people randomly depending on what page the yearbook was open to. On speaker phone. With no script. This friend has many fine points, talents, brain synapses I'm sure because she was one of only 5 kids in my German 5 class at Nathan Hale, but she is not much of a public or even private speaker in her native tongue. The first person she called we quickly realized, was high on something (judging by how she was dressed in her senior pic) and we interrupted her Cheetos and Wonder bread sandwich. Didn't remember Kim, didn't care, no nuthin' to work with here. I couldn't stop myself from heckling and guffawing and Kim, the speaker, couldn't hold herself together and she hung up.

Note to future reunion planners classes circa 1976-1998: Prank calling, while a wholesome and joyous activity in high school back in our day, has gone the way of the Beta Max and Sheena Easton in the days of caller ID. Also, it is not considered a good way to spread buzz. You can also scratch your plan of spreading buzz by toilet papering the homes of classmates who remained in the vicinity. Not only can that be taken the wrong way, but is wasteful and not very green, and insensitive to all the people who are only allotted 4 squares of TP for even their Big Jobs (see first blog for detail). Finally, we advise you not to bring your old beer bongs to the party either because although that is the fastest and classiest way to spread buzz, its one thing to fill them with Milwaukee's Best or Pabst, but at 20 years, we've upgraded to imports: Belgian Whites or Beck's dark and didn't want to direct all of our thirty seven cents for the good stuff and see it get spilled or upchucked onto the floor later. Budgeting limitations sadly forced us to cut this popular stock party activity, as essential as the pinata in West Allis, much the same way innocent school districts are forced to halt the use of beer bongs and toilet papering in these tough economic times.

After the prank call debacle, we decided to call people based on if they dressed up, or at least showered, for their senior picture. Also we took Kim off speaker. Handed the phone to Divina, who was voted Friendliest and Most Unforgettable. Had it been a category, she would have also won Most Likely to Out-Filibuster Strom Thurmond. A veritable Goldmine of talent, the Perfect Storm of Skills was our planning committee this was going to be one Titanic of a reunion.

Note to class of '88 for next time: Don't pick up the phone from Divina if you are in a hurry or if you have to go potty. That's why God invented caller ID.

Note to all: I was voted {brace yourselves} Class Clown which has been a completely irrelevant and useless label I have spent much of my adult life trying to shed. Kids can be cruel. Then be voted Class Clown. It is not a line on your resume, it won't get you a job unless you are applying at the circus then they expect you to wear the shoes and red foam nose. It sucks people!

Committee also includes our meeting hostess, Anna, said grade school friend who tricked me into being there for a question you can only answer "sure" to. On thing I love about Anna is invariably, her conversation will allude to the fact that although she is Sicilian, her family is Lutheran, not Catholic, because her people don't wanna confess. Also, although we are obviously the same age, her talk is peppered with phrases that were in the common vernacular during a brief period before the Second World War like: Hey Tiger, what's up? or instead of offering a drink, she'll say What's your poison, Cowboy? or even better: I feel like havin' a highball, Champ. But she is an excellent idea person chock full of common sense and frugality as ethnic people usually are: See previous blog about sharing toilet paper squares.

Also, a common thread for me, Anna, and yet another committee member, Candace, is that when we were in high school, no one told any one of us about eye brow waxing. Some of us ethnic folk have chosen to explain away our youthful unibrow as a byproduct of a frugal ethnic, low-falutin' folk who would have said "Why have two eyebrows when you only need one, that is wasteful." And they were right. But they also chose to give future generations the advantages that they didn't have for themselves by emigrating to America means that some of your beliefs and customs will be lost. We have uniformly agreed that choosing to wax, while distances us from our ethnic roots, is a spoiled and self-indulgent American custom that we will not ever sacrifice. Hey, none of us are wearing wicker shoes that curl at the toe any more either.

Rounding out the committee is Gabriel (that's pronounced "Gab" rhymes with lob, and don't call her Gabby), who turned out to be a satellite advisor from Madison, Wisconsin, where she could monitor our activities via Teddy Bears with Wazoo Cameras and nix activities that were not green and environmentally friendly and inclusive to all breeds of human race regardless of tree nut allergies. Yeah, Madison makes Shorewood look like a bunch of wannabees.

Ahhh, looking back on these early innocent meetings involved a lot of fond anecdotes about who used to be a prick and who was a slut yadda, yadda, yadda, a committee was born.

Note to : D. J. A. C. K. G. Your initials, plus my J, make us "GD-J-JACK!!"which only took me 11 months to figure out. I know, observations like that really made some of those meetings drag on!













Watch for my next Installment: Recruitment/ Inviting Yassar Arafat

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