Is It Wrong To Miss Class Reunions??

My grad school roommate watched Michelle and Romi's High School
Reunion about 10 times last academic year ... for which I'll
never forgive her.

So, uh, I've already missed my 5-year HS Reunion, and am now
trying to decide whether to attend or blow off the college 5 year.
The decision on the HS reunion was fairly easy: I have no
interest in catching up with most of those folks, on any cosmic
timeline. My HS class was uncanny in its utter worthlessness.
The class before and after mine had about 11 Rhodes and National
Merit Scholars, and the GPA cutoff to take advantage of the state
concurrent HS/College enrollment thing was, like, 3.6. My class
laid a big goose egg on the scholarships, and the GPA cutoff for
college classes was on the order of 2.34. Not that good grades
make the man, or woman. But my class was also waaaay too into life
projects such as football, Beavis & Butthead, Oasis, and, most
important, behaving as if HS was the highlight of their life.
For many, it was. I think the Bureau of Justice Statistics keeps
a separate file on the AHS class of 96'. OK... so I'm being
pretty harsh. But I'm also from a small town that has a
moderate-collective-leaning towards the drink, and with the
clustering of bars uptown, the time uptown around
Christmas/New Years serves pretty effectively as reunion-time
with anyone you might care to see, whether you grew up with them
or not.

The college 5-year is a tougher nut to crack. Gut feeling tells
me I should go, but I can also think of a dozen reasons and
incentives not to go. First, you have to understand, I went to
a small school that was all about 'intentional community'. So,
while I didn't take a blood oath or anything, I guess the idea is
that I should remain vigilant in keeping up with the community
post-grad-uation. But, ugg.. a few of the reasons not to go are
fairly compelling. 1) I keep in touch with a lot of my best
buddies from college, and others have informed me they can't make
it out 2) This college is not located in Vegas. Or Annapolis
or Ithaca... or Athens, for that matter. Its just not an uber-fun
place to get fired up about spending $300 to get to. But I know
and love a number of folks who live there, including a cousin,
so I won't harp on this too long 3) Unlike HS, I actually had
girlfriends in college, and while I am stupendously happy with
the EC woman I ended up with for the long haul, I harbor immense
feelings of regret and trepidation toward all the others and
reconnecting with any of them would be about as much fun as going
under the knife for hernia surgery again...

Lastly: call me a goof, but my favorite holidays are
July 4, New Years, and Halloween, with Halloween at the top of
the list. I really hate missing Halloween. If I went out to the
alma mater, instead of attending one or two swell costume parties
or events, I'd be holed up in some crappy smoke filled bar, or at
a Sinbad performance (memo to college: ol' S-bad burned out on the
new material back in 98'). Human life and social organization can
be, on the whole, pretty banal and disappointing and feckless.
I find a well attended, with high rates of attendee-participation
Halloween party an absolutely priceless thing. Its good to see
so many people let loose and let go of their everyday identities--
its also a heck of a lot of fun to discuss, say, Supreme Court
Nominee Mier with Richard Nixon, Napoleon, a Grateful Dead bear,
and a lifesize container of Palmolive.

Luckily..... if I do go, I still have an opportunity to do the
costume thing the weekend before at the 5th Annual Lebowski Fest
NYC. For those of you who are not familiar, Lebowski fest is a theme
party based off the Greatest Movie In Cinematic History, The Big
Lebowski. Check it out at:

http://www.lebowskifest.com/newyork2005.asp

So maybe I'll see you at Lebowski Fest. Or my college 5-year. Or
my HS 10-year. Somewhere down the road. The dude abides.