i got myself a rooster and i put him on the fence and he yelled for hale high 'cause he had good sense

Well, we did it. We went to the reunion! Here's my report:

Wait. First, look, we have no photos because our camera hasn't turned up yet. I know. And also it's terrible because Finn has this excellent hilarious tall red velour mouse hat that he's finally grown into, so he looks like the Cardinal of the Mice. We just discovered that this morning. He's like, oh, my God, this magical hat makes everybody love me even more. And he bangs his mittened fist on the steering wheel of his Bébé Pod learn-to-sit-up seat with imperious new joy. Love me, subjects! Okay, now he's a king. He turned into a king, from a cardinal. Whatever, man. Bear with me. You know what I mean.

We're just going to buy a new camera, and then we'll find our missing one, and then we'll have two.

Okay.

...dum dee dum.....

Well, we did it. We went to the reunion! Here's my report:

*Ladies are easier to recognize from their youth than men. The men were largely beefed out and sort of balded up. We were given little name tags that were actually our senior pictures (!) (return of the eyeliner!) with our names written tinily beneath them. You had to really peer like hell at the little nametag to make out the name, so they were pretty useless. You weren't going to walk up to someone and sort of make out with their chest for a second and then be like, oh, hello, Mike Frank. I kind of knew you. Or (squint, squint) ...oh, sorry....Richard.....Ro...senthal. We haven't met. Also, I wasn't wearing my glasses. Oh, I had them in my bag. But I wasn't wearing them. And I wasn't gonna wear them. Reunion! Vanity! Legitimate! If silly! And all night, I was like, dang it, would you believe it? I don't have my glasses. More's the pity. What a kerfuffle! Can't see who any of you are! So I talked to far more ladies than I did fellows.

*There was a healthy bunch of people that I was really happy to see. My friend Kris from Complain-o-Peeps, she and I met up with my dear old friend Sandi for a drink before the proceedings, and together we formed a reunion home base from which to operate. It was a joy to see her. You. It was a joy to see you. I know you're reading this, you cute Sandi. Call me. Seriously. (Kris, I see you all the time, relatively, so I feel I don't have to cite you, although you are always delightful.) And my old friends Kate and Kasia, it was a joy to lay eyes upon them. Kasia I hadn't seen since high school, and it had been nearly a decade since I'd seen Kate. Great ladies. A treat. And my favorite dude from high school was there, Mike Stanford. Only talked to him for a second, but I always thought he was the bee's knees. One of those quietly hilarious guys. That was nice! And Miss Kim Clark, who was in the drama class photo from the previous entry practicing her facial expression, she was a real treat to see as well. Warm and funny and down to earth. And there were lots of others, too. If for some freak reason you're reading this and you were there and you're like, what about me?, then it's safe to say that you're utterly among them.

*I totally got mistaken for somebody else in this great way at the end of the night. Dave and I were trying to make it out the door to go home, and I ended up in conversation with this one woman I knew. Lovely conversation, we were happy to see each other, but then I cut it short because we had to get home to the baby. And she was like, "Well, I would have known you anywhere. Kasia Zasoski!" And I didn't have the time or energy to correct her, so when she said, "But it's not Zasoski anymore, is it?!" I just threw out a cordial, "No, it isn't!" and we were on our way.

*Some people turned out to be dicks, is all I'll say about that. I'm not concealing any big story, I promise. You can just tell when somebody has turned out to be a dick, and that, my friends, was the case for a few of these ol' Raiders. But this was mostly only so for people who were headed that way twenty years ago.

*The keeping-it-real prize goes to Tim Little! Man, was he ever refreshing. He was like, I don't know what all these people are talking about, all "my life is so great"....MY life has been a roller coaster! He'd tried to go back to school six times, been diagnosed with ADD, been married, been divorced, is currently a bus driver, and was like fuck it! I'm on a ROLLER COASTER! God bless him. The honesty! I love it. Live long and prosper, man.

*Some exchanges were just like, here, these are my baby pictures. Okay, I see yours. Okay. Check. Move along.

*For some reason, a lot of people thought I'd moved to California. I've never even considered mvoing to California. They were like, we couldn't find your address! We heard you'd moved to California! Maybe they also thought I was Kasia Zasoski, who really lives in California.

*I wore that shirt. Nobody was like, AWESOME SHIRT! Nor was anybody like, what's with your shirt?

*There was a lot of HEY! Nice to see you! followed by an awkward pause and then followed by I think I'm going to get a drink! Good to see you! Which is what you'd expect.

*It would be stretching it to say that I ate sixty dollars worth of spicy popcorn shrimp.

*Dave was a great sport. He and Kris's husband Orion played pool and were low-key together. And he looked all foxy in his black corduroy blazer. And I was like, man, why is this music so loud! Nobody's going to be able to hear his foxy accent! So I kept working it into conversation that he's from Australia, which is retarded, but so am I.

*I loved seeing how some people who hadn't really come into focus in high school had bloomed in the intervening years. That's always how it should be, and usually how it is. You don't want to peak in high school. It's better to save it up. I'll be advising Finn to be as awesome as he likes in high school, but keep a little awesome in his pocket to detonate later in life.