Every Party Has its Big Jobs

Subtitled: Should you invite Yassar Arafat since he's not really dead?


So, when we last left our hero, Juj was up to her eyeballs in high school memorabilia, none of which was ringing a bell for her when she was stumped by an ethical conundrum that goes something like this:

While recruiting people for your 20th high school reunion, are you legally obligated to invite the girl who threatened to kick your a** in seventh grade?

Now, I know some of you are thinking, who didn't threaten to kick Juj's a** at some point in the duration of knowing her? I may have made a snarky comment or two back in the day, may have been the jerk who threw off the Bell Curve leaving everyone else holding their solid "C." I may have overindulged in TP at your house because the TP at my house was rationed. I may have temporarily relocated the canoe from the top of the genuine fake wood paneled station wagon you drove to school. I may have sent the contents of my beer bong flying onto your shoes I may have guffawed as you spewed yours. I may have tipped your parents off about your house party when they were out of town 'cause I ate all the stale gum drops that have been sitting on your TV since the Nixon era. (Sue me, I like the crunchy ones!)Yes, I may have given some folks cause to threaten to open the proverbial can of whoop a** on me at some point in my high school career aka the Trail of Tears.

Cry me a river people, we all did that kind of stuff to each other in high school--that stuff was funny!! But when I was in seventh grade, I was an angel. Sweet, scared, preppy, smart, and sheltered, a deadly combination at Frank Lloyd Wright Middle, feeder school to Nathan Jail, feeder school to the Ivy League. Coming to a very urban school from my warm suburban cocoon on my first day, I saw a girl wearing a leather bustier with an inch of black eyeliner encircling eye snappin' gum and smoking a cigarette and talking about "her ole man." I thought, wow, rough teacher, before I noticed that she was in one of the kid desks, the kind that is either a lefty or a righty and there was an imbalance between left handed people and the gross quantity of left handed desks at FLW and if you were a dork, you were relegated to learn how to be ambidextrous, which comes in handy, but doesn't help dilute your dork status. You guessed it, I learned to write lefty at FLW.

The halls at FLW were riddled with girl students like this girl. Boy students had full beard, tats, and records, and the scared, sweet, suburban kids were outnumbered, outmatched, outhoused (fortunately not outwitted) at FLW Middle which after dropping me off on Band Day, my mother always said "Frank Lloyd Wright would spin in his grave if he knew they named that pit after him."


So that first day, I pulled up to my left handed desk and just tried to blend in. This was challenging as I didn't own any leather or chains and certainly, at that point anyway, didn't know what accessories went with hoochy mama boots.

But as I slunk through the halls in metal locker camouflage with my fellow nerd and best bud Meredith, I knew that she was a more obvious target because she was not only as geeky as I, but she came equipped with braces and and extra 18 inches of height which would serve her well later in life, but those additional dork qualities made you nothing short of a bullseye at Frank Lloyd Wright Middle. Yes, our combined dorkanality was the glue that held us together.

As a side note here on the braces, kudos to Meredith's peeps for ponying up for the hardware. My family, being of frugal Eastern European descent, didn't believe in braces. Here is a sampling of other things we don't believe in:

1. That anyone has walked on the moon

2. That anyone should trick or treat or acknowledge Halloween in any way, shape or form, but our Ouija boards and Tarot cards are wholesome family fun on game night

3. That Yassar Arafat is really dead because he tried that already once in the 70s--Ara fat Liar is more like it

4. Sleeping over at a friend's house when you have a perfectly good bed of your own


Ok, so I got my buddy Meredith as a target, got my collar flipped up and an alligator is over my pocket just like everyone else, when some chickie catches my eye, looks me up and down and her evil gaze stops on my shoes and says:

"Hmmmm nice shoes."

Ok, just reading the comment wouldn't necessarily portray the menace in her voice and the fear in my stomach. You may ask yourself if I was wearing something gauche, but I was sporting maroon Rockports from their Back to School Fall of '82 collection. I took this moment to do some cursory research and see what was "en vogue" so my eyes quickly draw to Micki, Frank Lloyd Wright Middle's answer to Coco Chanel, to see what that would be. It is penny loafers but if you're Mick, you stick a dime in the slot, not a penny. Curses being low falutin' and out of vogue by birth! Even if I knew that penny loafers were en vogue before I went to Warehouse Shoes with my mom and five siblings, my parents never would have cottoned to the extravagance of wasting an extra two pennies (yeah, one for each foot see how I screwed with that Bell Curve?) much less two dimes (that's like two wieners a week during the Great Depression) to just stick in the slots for decoration!!! Mick gives me a sympathetic look that says, "I like you but your shoes are dorky and I soooo don't have your back on this."A shoulder shrug, Micki catwalks off and the chickie continues.

"I oughtta kick your a**."

Ok, fortunately the bell rings and Meredith is so shocked her eyes are saucers and her rubber bands are torpedoing out of her mouth and we scurry off to class while my nemesis proceeds to the girls' bathroom for a cup of joe and a smoke 'cause she's having a nic fit. Obviously. Who knows how badly this could have ended if the bells of any given Middle School particularly Frank Lloyd Wright (not in his vision, just in his honor) were not set to ring roughly every 17 minutes?

So I'm forced to walk the FLW halls the rest of the day in my once beloved, now the Achillies Heel of Footwear, maroon Rockports.

Which I never wore again.

Which made my mom threaten to kick my a** for wasting perfectly good shoes that she spent $18 on!! Curses!! Had she budgeted an extra .20 for the Rockport penny loafers I could have been in spitting range of high falutin' and en vogue.

This incident came to be known as the Maroon Shoe Massacre of '82. A callous and unprovoked attack from someone who should have been making fun of Meredith. I never quite recovered from the shock and embarrassment of the brutality.


So, flash forward to planning my 20 year reunion and being the Almighty Recruiter and wondering if it is ethical if this particular bully's invite gets, shall we say "lost," in the can that is supposed to be recycling but sometimes the kids throw half full yogurt containers and banana peels in there contaminating the whole idea. See?? Not easy being green when you have kids.

I thought in order to sleep at night I could make a small effort to contact this hussy. So I looked out my son's bedroom window to see if she was smoking in my backyard with her Lee Press on Nails reaching towards me for her invite.

She wasn't.


But I'm confessing it here today--I didn't try that hard. For this one person. But every other of the 284 names on that list got a postcard, a phonecall, an email. If I missed a name, there were my co-committee members, all of whom were more thorough and mature than I'll ever be. If you ever had a street address, you got something. Which will bring a fair percentage of you to say something asinine like this:


"I've been living in the same house on the same street for my whole life and my younger brother still goes to Hale and I didn't get invited to the last reunion."



Let me fill you in on a little secret. If you are at the same house for 38 years you are most likely living with your parents--squatting in their three-season room or crashing with the wife and four children in their genuine fake oak paneled rec room. Throwing out your mail or marking it "Return to Sender" is their passive aggressive way to light a fire under your butt and get you to move out so they can afford a tutor for your 35 year old brother who can't seem to work up enough class credit to graduate Nathan Jail.

I have used this same excuse for not going to a reunion, so I know first-hand it is bullsh**.

Note to planning committees for Class of '88, 5 & 15 year reunion: Sorry for lying.

I have even received my sister's invites for her reunions at my house and with all good intentions, meant to give them to her but before you know it, they are covered in yogurt, banana peels and pudding in the recycle bin. Yeah, sometimes pudding gets in there too but it is important that we are trying to be better and they don't kill horses to make pudding. Hello Jello?

Note to Nathan Jail Class of '85 reunion committee for the 10, 15 and 20: FYI, Anja doesn't live with me which you would know if you looked in my recycle bin. She is better than a Druid at being green so there!

There is one exception to the "I didn't get invited" excuse--I didn't get invited to my 10 year. My committee friend and former School council member, Jill, was a little shall we say terse? for my "dissin' them on the 10." I told her I didn't know about it and she said yes you did--I have your address I get your stupid Christmas card every year! Something to that effect. When Jill and I put this unresolved tension behind us to work together for the 20th, I showed up with a pen that didn't work and she showed up with her maps, traps, yearbooks, protractor, compass, original autographed yearbook pages, letters of recommendation from her high school teachers, letter jacket, class list, Goody comb in her back pocket, "I want my MTv button," her Frankie say RELAX t-shirt, her Madonna-esque cone shaped bra, her economy size can of Aqua net, her and her Pop Rocks and what fell out of her files? Yup, my addressed and stamped invite to the 10th!! Jill, while always the Best Driver and faithful alum to our class, was a damn liar that she invited me to the 10, but unlike Yassar Arafat, her crime was forgivable so we moved on.

Other people who don't get an invite to the class reunion are either in jail or the witness protection program and you just don't want to be found, but we've done our best with what we had to work with. We'd looked at your arrest records, your trial transcripts, your appeal paperwork, your psychiatrist's reports (yea, its a fun class) and we just couldn't find you. Not 'cause we didn't want you. My parameters for being invited to the 20 year reunion for the class of '88 were if you have $50 and a smile, you're in. Provided you keep your comments about the Class Clown shoes to your damn self.

Disclaimer: Don't forget my Balkan people have a tendency towards exaggeration: No one was left out in the invitation portion of the reunion planning. The planning of my 20th high school reunion was a joyous and rewarding experience that enriched my life more than I ever thought possible. More than even childbirth and recycling. Each and every one of the 285 names that rang a bell to me (roughly 48 when all was said and done) was met with lots of love and happiness and nothing but thoughts of goodwill and peace for there was no greater group to walk the Trail of Tears with than the class of '88. Hope you all have had a "rad" summer like so many of you wished me in my autographed pages of my yearbook. Love you guys. Kiss Kiss. Also, if any of you can identify or remember a girl named Carie Jo Ferkovich, none of us could-- but even she got an invitation though we are starting to think she is in the CIA now. Feeder school to the CIA as well as Ivy League!! Hot damn, the think tank of southeastern Wisconsin.