Thought That Came Unbidden

Do you think the band Phish objects to the use of the term phishing?

I never promised that the Thoughts would be profound.

Something must happen to your brain as you hit your late 30s. A hardening of the arteries, some invisible lesions, a chemical imbalance, something. Otherwise the only explanation I can find for anyone to even consider going to their 20 year high school reunion is retrocollective amnesia. Why retrocollective? It’s something I made up: it’s retro because we have trouble remembering just exactly how much high school really, truly sucked and it’s collective because it seems to happen to a large enough group of people all at once.

And yes, high school did truly suck. Until Dubya actually went and made it an unofficial U.S. government policy, high school was the closest thing we had to institutionalized torture in this country.

Throw a large group of hormonal adolescents (are there any other kind?) into an environment in which there is huge pressure to conform and to engage in actual or practice mating rituals, add the pressure of having to absorb information while telling them that their ability to absorb said information will have a direct and profound impact on the rest of their lives, and mix that with an authority structure that turns a blind eye to the communities’ (because there are many communities in a high school population) self-decided punishments for those who either choose not to or who are physically or emotionally incapable of conforming and voila! You’ve created something that for most kids, the ones who aren’t popular or pretty or thin or (in some cases) heterosexual, is to be endured, survived, something that we come out of knowing that the rest of our lives will go on in spite of not because of it.

And yet, twenty years later we contemplate paying upwards of $100 a person to attend what amounts to a cocktail party with bad hotel buffet food to socialize with people we barely remember and if we do remember them it’s mostly for reasons we’d like to forget. So what is it that makes us even consider going to such an event?

Is it the revenge fantasy, the one where we can look the ex-cheerleader who is now dried out and maintaining what vestiges of her youthful beauty she still has through the grace of botox and another $1000 per month worth of product in the face and know that our mortgage is going to be paid off before we hit 40 and oh, by the way, we got carded last night at the bar ’cause we still look like we’re under 30 thank you oh so much (go me, oh yeah, go me, oh yeah)? Is that desire to “show them,” the same one that makes you want to parade your new paramour around places you know the ex who dumped you still frequents, really that powerful? Most high school reunion movies have some element of this; some are based entirely upon it.

Is it to confirm to ourselves that yes, we really survived the horror that is secondary education? That the lockers are in fact small and dinged, that the gym does reek of old sweat socks, that the teachers, principals, and disciplinarians no longer wield authority over us (even though in reality most of us have traded one authority structure for another only instead of giving you three days in the “white room” after school your boss now just gives you an average on your yearly evaluation)?

Maybe it’s to confirm that we did make it out of our 20s. A by no means authoritative listing on my high school’s alumni board shows that of the 742 people in my graduating class four of us failed to do just that: Two were killed in ordinary car accidents; one was a casualty of the Gulf War; and the fourth was raped, beaten, and left to die while visiting her sister on the Big Island in Hawaii the Christmas after college graduation. I’m betting because of my age cohort and our lovely, inclusive and accepting attitudes (where is the sarcasm font when you need it?) we’ve probably more than one AIDS related death (while he was a year behind me this is how we lost my friend Danny).

Or is the cosmic do-over all we’re really looking for? A chance to in some way go back to “then” knowing what we know “now” feeling more secure than we ever did during a time when a random pimple could mean the difference between a good week and a bad week so we can right some wrong or make a different choice in something that we believe has some sort of primal, formative effect on who we are in that now.

I’ve got about a month to decide if I’m going to my reunion. Given that my case of the retrocollective doesn’t seem to be so bad, and given that there are maybe a dozen people out of the remaining 737 I’d like to see, odds are I’ll probably spend that weekend at the beach instead.

The last time I was in The Netherlands was for a week long conference for work. I survived the international flight, landing at Schipol at 6am and finding nothing open for breakfast, managed to navigate the train system by myself (the old, mechanical flip board in Amsterdam’s Central Station is a magnificent sight to behold), and got to the hotel at the beach (it was November) on the North Sea without damage.

My collegues were great people: smart, funny, prone to telling dirty jokes in loud voices in public, and serious drinkers. By the fourth day not only was I hung over, I was also sick. Someone showed up with the tail end of a sinus infection and due to the alcohol, the travel, and the impenetrable clouds of cigarette smoke I picked it up like something that gets picked up right away after being dropped.

My flight home to the U.S. included not only said sinus infection and hang over but also menstrual cramps. Until very recently I didn’t think it was possible to feel sicker without being seriously ill.

Boy was I wrong.

I don’t normally get the viral infections. I’m lucky that way given that I come from people who as a family pass the same cold back and forth all winter long. I must have been ripe for it because I spent the last two days shuttling between the couch and the toilet, security bowl in hand for the vast space in between.

Did I mention the cramps?

Yeah, minor illness can get worse than having to face the gendarme with the automatic weapon at customs while you’re sick, the uterus is making a fist, and you’re hung over. But at least this time I didn’t have to have my luggage searched.

Like many folks I have an @yahoo.com e-mail account. Unlike many of the folks I know who have such an account I’m pretty good about going in and clearing out my spam folder. It may just be the OCD in me but my friend K.’s approach (“What? They’ll get deleted eventually.”) gives me hives.

I did an experiment last month, though, just to see how many unsolicited messages this fairly active, fairly public address would collect in a month.

487 ± 4 (This accounts for the three messages in the box dated March 26, 2038)

That’s not many by most standards. Two jobs ago I was responsible for the webmaster@ e-mail box for my company. We collected that many messages in a day. Of course, we were also a huge non-profit and thus more of a target than my one little Yahoo! address which is clearly registered to a private individual.

There’s something unnaturally satisfying, though, about following that link that says “Empty” beside the Bulk Folder.

Have you ever stood before a food buffet so rich, so sumptuous that you were unable to choose what you wanted to eat even though you were starving? The warm, meaty smell coming off the carving table awakens your hunger for animal protein perhaps touching some long lost hunter aspect while pasta-based dishes warming above flames contained by small cans promise the solid comfort of carbohydrates, tomatoes, and more cheese than you probably should eat in one sitting. The dessert table likely catches your eye too even though you were probably trained from childhood that dessert is a reward for cleaning your plate and not something to be truly enjoyed by those who haven’t proven themselves “good.” So you stand there, heavy, gold-edged china plate in hand and gape as those with more surety, or more gluttony, stream passed to partake of the meal as if there will never be another one.

Reading the news lately I’ve felt as if I were standing in front of just such a buffet: there are so many things from which to choose, so many things happening that poke and prod at the fabric of our collective reality, that I’m finding it hard to know where to begin.

• Don Imus shooting his mouth off and proving with a swiftness that made my head spin that consequences are still sometimes tied to actions (though not for the reasons many may think).
• Players from the Duke University lacrosse team being cleared and the district attorney’s actions (incompetence or perfidy…you decide) revealed in a brou ha ha that probably never should have made it to the national stage.
• The media frenzy (is that taking place anywhere but on the east coast?) over the shootings at Virginia Tech and the way the incident has been pulled, twisted, and manipulated to serve one cause (gun control vs. right to bear arms; security vs. privacy) or another all of whom still ignore the lessons we should have learned from Columbine eight years ago. (Hint: it’s a deeper cultural problem that won’t be fixed by granting students the right to carry concealed weapons in class or by debating whether or not security takes primacy over privacy on college campuses).
• Global warming becoming the hot (ha!) issue with the media and minor celebrities who don’t realize that their idiotic calls for action (um…OK, so the bus runs on biodiesel Sheryl, that’s great, but one square of toilet paper per person isn’t going to work for those of us in the real world who don’t have the Brazilian on a regular basis and who actually, you know, eat food and excrete solid matter) which don’t take into account the added cost of saving the planet and how the $8 light bulb really isn’t an option for the person working minimum wage and spending every dime she earns just to survive.
• Alec Baldwin going on national television to complain that there are different behavioral standards for men and for women. Um, Alec? Try looking in your pay check or at the freedom you have and then complain about differing behavioral standards, OK?
• And let us not forget the political bloviating going on around the long, long, long run up to the 2008 Presidential election and the war in Iraq.

So many things to choose from I don’t know where to begin.