Posts Tagged "high school"
10 years strong and growing
So remember way back when I was talking about my 10 year class reunion? Yeah, the one I ended up taking planning control of because I’m kind of Type A like that? Well, it happened in October but only after it almost DIDN’T happen.
After going back and forth, we finally settled on a restaurant in Oakland for dinner and dancing because we’re grown; it would be fun to get together and hang out. We even had a nice raffle set up: I was able to get Giants tickets for the next season through work and we were going to have some other stuff that we hadn’t really figured out at the moment. I was pretty excited about how everything was starting to fall into place and people were excited about it, especially after the first set of plans for a reunion fizzled and died.
I should have taken that as a sign. If that wasn’t a canary…sigh.
We set a sliding scale for the tickets, the earlier you bought them, the cheaper they’d be. We would be cutting it very slim on making any kind of profit to pay for a DJ and to have some for a class gift but it was doable. And then the whispers started. Apparently people thought it was too expensive [mind you, the ticket prices were as follows: $50 singles/$70 couples and went up by $10 the closer we got to the date, topping out at $80/90 I believe, I don’t remember anymore], and too far, and how it was such a shame we weren’t having something so people can bring their kids, and how we’re young still and we should do something FUN. Really? Fun? Because dinner, dancing, and general shooting the breeze isn’t fun? We’re from Vallejo: we make EVERYTHING fun!
Except no one wanted to tell the people organizing the event about these concerns. After about a month we finally had to threaten to cancel the reunion because of lack of interest before people jumped into action: finally complaining outright. I was admittedly steamed by this point and didn’t care anymore. As upset as I was, I still wanted a reunion. So we finally just left it up to them to plan it.
And that is how we ended up at a local park for a BYO bbq. I kid you not.
And all those people who wanted a picnic so they could bring their kids? THEY DIDN’T EVEN SHOW UP.
I know, I will admit that I didn’t have high hopes for the revised reunion. In fact, I had vowed that I would probably only stay an hour or two tops. But you know what? I ended up staying for 5 hours and I had a blast. I had to remind myself the whole point was to get us together and that’s what happened. We had a great group of probably 40 people all told that rolled through during the day and I had fun bouncing from group to group chatting everyone up. It was fun reliving some of our high school stories, and yes, even after 10 years people still remembered how in love I was with Tiger and Derek Jeter. Though, the way I championed Tiger, it would be impossible to forget!
We had a great raffle as well: Giants/Dodger tickets and a stadium fleece blanket, a gift certificate for a massage, a gift card and some candy for the movies and a couple of Target gift cards. We even made more than enough money to recoup the deposit I lost on the restaurant and give a generous gift to the school, though I opted to only take half of what I was owed and gave the rest to the school.
Everyone was appreciative of the efforts of Jessica and I, which helped heal the wounds from being the Facebook complainers. Can you believe one person had the nerve to say it was stupid for the reunion to be held on a specific date just because one of the organizers [me] would be in town? Excuse me what now? Why would I plan it for a day I wouldn’t be in town? So I can’t plan it for a day that works for me but its okay for someone to ask that it gets bumped up a week so it’ll coincide with her already planned trip to the area?
Really.
But it turned out to be a great day. I stayed a lot longer than I thought I would and people were hanging out until the park closed. And a small group of us made our own after-party with dinner and then dancing in the City [I did not join for dancing since I had to be up early the next day]. Sure we still had people who complained about it being ghetto, but those same people didn’t reply when we had the original plan set so you can’t really rest your hat on that. And even when some folks tried to turn on us on Facebook, my friends were there to launch the defense.
Though that was nothing like the one-man assault from a spurned classmate that no one really remembered from school that erupted into a post-reunion flame war. Seeing everyone band together against him? Priceless.
I love my class.
