Monday, July 26, 2004
Nothing triggers nostalgia quite like a form letter
Last week I got my first official invite to attend my high school ten year reunion. If you haven't gotten one of these just imagine what it feels like seeing the subject in your inbox. I'd like to say that there's this feeling of mild catharsis and nostalgia that takes you when you stop and gulp down the fact that it's been a decade since graduation, but I'd be lying. And I'll never lie here. It was actually a feeling of relief, maybe even contentment. Before I opened it I was afraid that I'd get this kind of letter:
Dear Mike,
Wow, can you believe it's already been a whole decade? How's life been treating you since '94? Have you married and had kids, conquered the stock market, or invented the longer lasting light bulb? Well, regardless of what you've been up to, we'd love it if you could attend the upcoming reunion of the Class of 1994! Remember the friends and great times you had? If not, then that's all the more reason to attend, because we're going to be raising those latent memories of first loves and standing O's for one night only. And it won't be the same without you. We hope to see you there!
What worried me about receiving something like this is it would have piqued my interest. I would have started thinking back on first kisses and high fives. I might have actually considered attending. Then I would have dropped a grand on two tickets, since there's no way I would go alone, seen everyone there whom I wished would die of Herpes Simplex XII, and left. And the only reason they would be there is because they never mustered up the strength to leave Evansville, aka clone of every other midwestern hellscape. Nobody that I ever considered respected should be withing 1,000 miles of Evansville. Well, thankfully, that's not exactly the kind of letter I got. What I got was actually more like this:
Mr X,
It has been a long time. I have good news for you. Memorial high school is having a ten year reunion for the class of 1994. Please RSVP as soon as you can so I can assign you a seat. There will be door prizes and a cash bar. Dinner is $30. Dress code is semi-formal and will be enforced. Hope to hear from you soon.
Whew. Close one. This letter was so perfect for me that it was like a future version of Mike who actually had attended this reunion intercepted the email, doctored it, and sent it through to me so that I would never have attended and he could live out the rest of his life a happier, snappier me. This letter was perfectly indicative of the kind of incessant and oppressive structure that was fisted to me for four years.
A $30 fee for dinner? Listen, I was there every day for four years. I know damn well that there wasn't a thing that cafeteria could produce that was worth $0.49, much less thirty bucks. At age 16 I might have dropped that to have the cashier lunch lady bent over in front of me, face down in the cole slaw, but that's it. Plus by now she's probably got an ass the size of a buffet pan. And what's the deal with the cash bar? Is it even a remote possibility that I'm not going to get shitfaced and start throwing chairs anyway? So why do you have to empty my bank account? I think any reunion should have free drinks, period. And when everyone is loaded and the knives come out, you can think of it as a debt of therapy repaid.
But the part that sealed it for me wasn't anything written in the form note I got in my inbox. It wasn't even that the reunion committee had paid classmates.com for my email address, which should piss anybody off. It's enough to make you think that the "permanent record" actually exists. No, what clued me in was that the exact same email was sent to me twice. So if for some reason I was struck by a bout of stroke induced euphoria and decided for a moment to attend, I could just see the second email show up saying, "Oh and by the way, the entire administration is still retarded." Thanks, reunion committee.
If you've actually paid for access to your "friends" from "the day" from classmates, do me a favor and start emailing your old classmates the death threats they deserve. You can find mine at Indiana: Evansville: Reitz Memorial High School: Class of 1994. Pipe bombs will be fine too. Send me a jpeg of the right person's severed head and I'll send you a complementary "I'll do anything for Mike's love" t-shirt.
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Dear Mike,
Wow, can you believe it's already been a whole decade? How's life been treating you since '94? Have you married and had kids, conquered the stock market, or invented the longer lasting light bulb? Well, regardless of what you've been up to, we'd love it if you could attend the upcoming reunion of the Class of 1994! Remember the friends and great times you had? If not, then that's all the more reason to attend, because we're going to be raising those latent memories of first loves and standing O's for one night only. And it won't be the same without you. We hope to see you there!
What worried me about receiving something like this is it would have piqued my interest. I would have started thinking back on first kisses and high fives. I might have actually considered attending. Then I would have dropped a grand on two tickets, since there's no way I would go alone, seen everyone there whom I wished would die of Herpes Simplex XII, and left. And the only reason they would be there is because they never mustered up the strength to leave Evansville, aka clone of every other midwestern hellscape. Nobody that I ever considered respected should be withing 1,000 miles of Evansville. Well, thankfully, that's not exactly the kind of letter I got. What I got was actually more like this:
Mr X,
It has been a long time. I have good news for you. Memorial high school is having a ten year reunion for the class of 1994. Please RSVP as soon as you can so I can assign you a seat. There will be door prizes and a cash bar. Dinner is $30. Dress code is semi-formal and will be enforced. Hope to hear from you soon.
Whew. Close one. This letter was so perfect for me that it was like a future version of Mike who actually had attended this reunion intercepted the email, doctored it, and sent it through to me so that I would never have attended and he could live out the rest of his life a happier, snappier me. This letter was perfectly indicative of the kind of incessant and oppressive structure that was fisted to me for four years.
A $30 fee for dinner? Listen, I was there every day for four years. I know damn well that there wasn't a thing that cafeteria could produce that was worth $0.49, much less thirty bucks. At age 16 I might have dropped that to have the cashier lunch lady bent over in front of me, face down in the cole slaw, but that's it. Plus by now she's probably got an ass the size of a buffet pan. And what's the deal with the cash bar? Is it even a remote possibility that I'm not going to get shitfaced and start throwing chairs anyway? So why do you have to empty my bank account? I think any reunion should have free drinks, period. And when everyone is loaded and the knives come out, you can think of it as a debt of therapy repaid.
But the part that sealed it for me wasn't anything written in the form note I got in my inbox. It wasn't even that the reunion committee had paid classmates.com for my email address, which should piss anybody off. It's enough to make you think that the "permanent record" actually exists. No, what clued me in was that the exact same email was sent to me twice. So if for some reason I was struck by a bout of stroke induced euphoria and decided for a moment to attend, I could just see the second email show up saying, "Oh and by the way, the entire administration is still retarded." Thanks, reunion committee.
If you've actually paid for access to your "friends" from "the day" from classmates, do me a favor and start emailing your old classmates the death threats they deserve. You can find mine at Indiana: Evansville: Reitz Memorial High School: Class of 1994. Pipe bombs will be fine too. Send me a jpeg of the right person's severed head and I'll send you a complementary "I'll do anything for Mike's love" t-shirt.
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