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BINGO

As 2010 came to a close, it was a time for mass reminiscing, nostalgia and saccharine year end best of lists (who, for the most part, are always composed of the same 9 movies with the exception with one sly declaration of youth sandwiched in a list of safe classics).

For young adults of a certain age, it meant that we had to take a second ride on the nostalgia express. Five years had passed since graduation, so it was high time that the high school development office bug us for money under the auspicious guise of a "reunion."

The five year high school reunion. Not much has changed, except that now we were legally drinking on campus as opposed to sneaking off to the bathroom to take a pull off a bottle of generic vodka.

Now, I hate to generalize or make blanket statements, but there is absolutely no reason to have a five year reunion. Unless, of course, it were to take place more than five years from graduation (e.g. when people actually have something to say about their lives). But then, I suppose, you couldn't call it a five year reunion, unless you attended a high school that didn't emphasize the importance of semantics.
Let's be honest: what has changed over the past five years? Four years of college. Maybe a full-time job. Long term girlfriend. New haircut. That's about it. Then again, there is bound to be someone interesting in attendance. We all went to high school with that one person who, on a whim, would drop out of college, steal his parents' credit card, travel to Yosemite, become a deputy park ranger, wind up in Israel at a John Muir conference and meet Bono, etc. So you might want to catch up with him/her, but what are the odds that they are even going to show up to a hot plate catered dinner in Pasadena?

You keep in touch with the people you want to and you gladly let others fall by the wayside. Graduation is not the great equalizer, and I'm glad it's not. There is no class war, no ongoing struggle between the cool and the uncool and the invisible. Simply put, there are some people that you just don't want to talk to and vice versa. The way it should be.

So, since not enough time has elapsed for a reunion to really mean anything, here is a little game to make the occasion a bit more entertaining. A way to make all of the inane and banal conversations into a reason to celebrate your classmates' quirks...which haven't changed over the past five years.

Note: I waited two weeks after my own reunion to post this, as I didn't want certain people (even though I don't care what they think) to consider me an asshole.

(click to enlarge)


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