Get Me to the Church On Time

I got a call from a friend of mine from high school whom I've kept in touch with. Bear in mind that high school was not so much something I graduate from as something I escaped. Surmounted. I made jokes about it being like Auschwitz on regular intervals, which is a lot darker once you've seen the actual Auschwitz. The fact that they erected black wrought-iron gates around the whole thing really didn't help dispel the comparison. Shortly after this call I had a wedding invitation in my mailbox.

I got my ass there, on time even. I'm really glad for the three other weddings I've had to attend in the past year, all of which were friends from high school or earlier, which led to a complete wedding-appropriate outfit. One less thing to be distraught over. The gift was easy too, God bless registries. I know the girl, but really, I have no sense of good crystal or how to approach her specific toasting needs.

I stumbled into the church gymnasium, decked out for a wedding. Red roses, white lights, and some sort of fabric that after some research I have found the name of: crinoline. Steak was served, so that was a plus, and the entire ceremony lasted fifteen minutes, another plus. I appreciate not having to sit through long ceremonies, having sat through multiple. But then, then, the questions started.

"Wow! I haven't seen you in years!"

"Yeah, I know." 'I engineered it that way.'

"How have you been?"

I shrugged. "Good. You?"

"Good! Oh, hey, doesn't this make you miss high school?"

"Not really, no."

They faltered. "But didn't we have a blast?"

'You and I?' I thought. "Maybe you. Graduation was a day of liberation for me."

"Are you going to go to the reunion?"

"Spend a night hanging out with people I didn't really like when I was younger and probably will react to my presence with the indifferent silence that I spent four years in?" I pause. Sometimes long sentences with big words slows people down. "Probably not."

And then I spot the swollen bellies of impending childbirth walk around arm-in-arm with men smiling because they're too dumb to realize what they've thrown away.

It's not that I'm bitter or an elitist. It's that I'm kind of selective. I had my friends. We could talk about anime, Star Wars, existentialism, Harry Potter, comic books, Faulkner, politics. I never gave a rats ass about who was hot, either in school or the celebrity world. I don't care about having a 'pimp' ride, or how exactly to best attract the opposite sex. And I really, really hate bullshit small talk. I can do it. I'd just rather not.

Did I mention this was a Mormon wedding? In case you're unaware of what this implies, I'll spell it out: dry wedding. Dry. Wedding. Immediately following this shindig I got intimate with a bottle of Jameson and a copy of Evil Dead.

Actually, ironically enough, today's Diesel Sweeties captured that exact feeling. I wish I could have read this before the wedding, so that when asked if I missed high school, I could retort with "Unlike you, I don't confuse 'The Breakfast Club' with 'Shawshank Redemption.'"