Tennessee

Since my 10 year high school reunion is in less than two months I’ve been receiving weekly email reminders from Classmates.com concerning registration fees and schedules and screaming, all-caps warnings to be careful not to MISS OUT ON ALL THE FUN! The president of my graduating class, who was president all four years of high school, types everything in all caps and uses a healthy amount of exclamation points, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re the type of person who, without the aid of capital letters and exclamation points, would think that the only fun to be had would be lower-case fun followed by a period, and what kind of fucking fun is that?

I’m actually looking forward to the reunion, even though I’m going to be five months pregnant at the time and so bloated that I’ll have filed a missing persons report on my ankles. I haven’t been back to my hometown in almost four years, and from the messages people are leaving on the boards at Classmates.com, it looks like I’ll be one of the few women who hasn’t yet given birth to an entire team of little-leaguers, set to take after their very athletic and thick-necked fathers. I can pretty much guarantee that any child of mine will take one look at a baseball and immediately ask where its USB port is.

The president of my class started a discussion thread about setting up a table at the reunion to honor those classmates of ours who have “past away” in the ten years since high school, and began by mentioning two students whom she knew had died, Student A and Student B. Several people were shocked to hear about the the passing of Student B, as the death of Student A was well known, and many left comments of condolences and sadness. I had heard about Student A, but was also shocked to hear about the passing of Student B. A few days after the initial post someone left a message that said, “You know, I just talked to Student B’s father about his son dying, and he hasn’t heard anything about it.”

I certainly hope Student B doesn’t show up to the reunion to find a memorial erected in reverent dedication to his untimely death. That would totally be lower-case fun followed by a period.