Pros and Cons of Putting 16-Year-Old Girls in Wedding Gowns

1988 – All About the Hair

Virtual Classmates: Why Facebook is Better Than Your 20-Year Reunion

My 20-year high school reunion is coming up next weekend and I won’t be there. I have opted instead to venture down a virtual reunion road this summer. It’s been fun, don’t you think? I had hoped Classmates.com would have been a little more enlightening, but so far I’ve received more guest book signatures from random grads looking for what – I don’t know, than from actual classmates. I know I should have done this earlier, but since diving into MySpace and Facebook last week, I can honestly say that Facebook beats the face-to-face reunion any day! Here’s why:

- Everyone is more beautiful on Facebook
- Facebook lets you search for whoever you want, and they don’t even know it – do they?
- Once you get bored of Facebook, you simply log out – no excuses, no remorse
- It’s much easier to save face on Facebook when someone hasn’t a clue who you are
- The extent of Facebook communication is probably all you really need
- You can brag on Facebook without having to say anything out loud
- You don’t need to lose 10 pounds to log onto Facebook
- Your husband won’t come into contact with any of your old boyfriends on Facebook
- Your hustband won’t know you didn’t have any boyfriends in high school on Facebook
- Facebook saves you all the guilt you’d inevitably suffer when you realized you really didn’t want to keep keep up with all those old best friends ever who seemed even closer after that bottle of wine at the reunion, but who you realized as soon as the next day at the picnic you have absolutely nothing in common with (excepting of course the whole eighties nostalgia and the wine)
- There are no women in prom gowns looking for love on Facebook (that I’m aware of)
- You can’t be too catty about who’s had what done on Facebook

And best of all?

- You can exploit your Facebook adventure for the creative process! Hell yeah I cruise Facebook and call it research. Yay for Facebook. Friend me, would ya? I like *so* want to be in the popular crowd!

PS – Next week is the last post in this series. I recall promising a picture… ?

Class of ’88: Famous Sehome Alums

For this week’s intallment of the virtual high school reunion (aka I don’t really want to go), I decided to do a little research on our dear alma mater. Did you know we have page in Wikipedia?

We all know about Hilary Swank right? Not sure if she would have been a freshman in 1988 or not. So she’s a big deal, but did you know the conservative radio host Glenn Beck hails from Mariner pride as well? According to Wikipedia he graduated in ’86. So much for believing what you read. Let’s not forget Jon Auer and The Posies, who are going strong.

There’s another note on the timeline that I question: they say Iron Maiden played in the Sehome gym in appreciation for help with a broken down tour bus? Hmm. They say it was October of 1986. Anyone remember this?

I say we populate that wiki page with all our stunning accomplishments – what do you say?

What have you done that you’d brag about at the reunion?

Class of ’88: News You Never Noticed

Just in case you missed current events your senior year, here’s what happened in the months leading up to graduation:

1/8 – Dow Jones falls over 140 points, or 6.85%, to close at 1,911.31. Ouch. I didn’t even know what the Dow Jones was in high school.

3/16 – Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States ala the Iran-Contra Affair. This is the plan where we traded guns for people. Good plan.

3/26 – Jesses Jackson defeats Michael Dukakis in the Michigan Democratic caucuses to become the temporary front-runner for the party’s nomination, later to be defeated by George H. W. Bush. The Democrats have come a long way.

4/12 – Sonny Bono is elected Mayor of Palm Springs, CA. Arnold Schwarzeneggar dreams of greatness.

5/16 – A report by U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop reports the addictive properties of nicotine rival heroin and cocaine. Did anyone tell the Smoke Hole?

What do you remember that was going on in the world beyond the halls of high school?

High School: The Best Years of Your Life? I Hope Not

I feel so sorry for all those people who believed that crap they used to feed us about high school being the best years of our lives. What kind of terrible lives must these people have had to dole out such wisdom? So if I understand it correctly, if the highlight of your life were the four years you spent in high school, the rest of your life is what? One continuous disappointment?

And what did that little platitude do for the rest of us? Talk about squashing a person’s hopes. This is as good as it gets? If I’d believed that I would have ended it all with a lethal dose of Andre’s pink champagne sometime before prom.

Sure there were good times. Good stories. But it wasn’t all happy days and football nights. Some of us spent those years trying desperately to fit in, had our hearts broken in fifteen places, and realized our parents weren’t who we’d been led to believe. Some of us got lost.

Just ask Jerry, who asphixiated himself in his parents’ garage.

Just ask Chris, who burned himself up in the worst trip ever.

These two guys I went to middle school with, to elementary school, guys who made you laugh, who seemed to have everything – didn’t make it. And no reunion would be the same without them.

Highschool: If You Had To Do It All Over

It’s time for another installment in the Class of ’88 Virtual Reunion!

We’ve reminisced about music and movies, and I’ve got you all caught up on my life in the past 20 years. I know you’d all pierce your own nipples before you’d relive it all, but I’m curious – if you could go back armed with these past 20 years of wisdom, what would you do different? (Differently?)

I would:
-not wear so much makeup.
-be in more plays.
-not quit the concert choir.
-be a cheerleader.
-finish that paper in College Writing.
-date high school boys.
-take the SAT.
-go to class.
-buy stock in Aquanet.
-write it all down.

Oh what a freakish student I’d be! I’m especially curious what the people who did all these things wished they’d done. So give it up – what would you have done?