How I Prepared for My High School Reunion!

This past weekend I ventured back to my hometown of Rochester, MN for my 20 high school reunion. I found that digging into books and movies with reunion themes to be just as essential for my preparation for my high school reunion as losing weight!  Placing myself in what if scenarios is often quite useful for mentally preparing myself for situations that I am a little nervous about. I thought I would share some of the resources that I discovered in this mental preparation.

MOVIES

                Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion---Romy and Michelle prepare for their high school reunion by trying to find better jobs and boyfriends so that they look good at their reunion. There is drama at the reunion with former love interests and they pretend to invent post-it notes. This movie is pretty campy and dated but I still found watching this movie to be entertaining.  

                Grosse Point Blank—This by far has to be my personal favorite reunion themed movie. Martin is a professional assassin who is sent back to his hometown, Grosse Point, for an assignment. It just so happens that his high school reunion is also going on. I really love how honest his is that he is a professional assassin and that people say things that indicate that they think he is joking around.

TELEVISION

           30 Rock "Reunion"—Jack convinces Liz to go to her high school reunion and comes along with her. Jack gets mistaken for a man that no one has seen since high school and he just rolls with it.  Watching this episode was honestly my husband’s idea but it was completely worth it as someone who enjoys Tina Fey’s humor quite a bit.

BOOKS

                Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg—My method of choosing this particular book was Googling books with high school reunion themes and the combination of recognizing the author’s name and being able to find it at the library is how it made my list. The premise of this book was how people were rethinking their life decisions in light of their 40 year high school reunion. While I thought that there were some lines with great insight like “It might be interesting to see all of those people again even though he’d never been close to them,” I found the plot to be very slow moving and at times simply boring. This is one that I would recommend skipping.

                The 10 Year Reunion by Susan Wiggs—I really enjoyed this book. The premise is that a woman gets set up on a blind date by a group of women for her 10 year high school reunion. Of course it turns out to be a great deal because there turns out to be chemistry between the two of them and they fall in love. It’s full of romantic comedy tropes which I am a real sucker for.

                Bittersweet by Lavyrle Spencer—I honestly have not read this book since college when I read every Lavyrle Spencer book that I could get my hands on. But it came up on a Goodreads list as a novel with a high school reunion theme.  Two high school sweethearts reunite at their high school reunion and develop a relationship again…while one of them is in a struggling marriage. I am not sure what I would think of this book now in light of developing a more critical eye about what I read but it was definitely worth putting on this list.

                Don't You Forget About Me—This one is in my TBR (to be read pile) but a story about a woman who is obsessed about John Hughes films and the description says that she is “determined to right past wrongs at her high school reunion” makes it sound like it could be a hilarious read and it was only 99 cents on Kindle.  While I have been slowing down quite a bit on book buying since it fit a theme that I was legitimately researching and it was really cheap it seemed like a justifiable expense.

                It seems like the genre is full of “what if” things turned out differently and utilizing a reunion as a way to reunite with an old friend or lover or to get back at a former nemesis.  But it also has a lot of themes people trying to look more impressive than they really are.  If anything the stories pinpoint on the anxieties that people have about reunion situations. At the end of the day most people are likely nervous about what they will say to someone they have not seen in 20 years and trying to deliberate what story they will tell. I think that is why these stories are written and really draw people in!

Exactly a week before my reunion I was let go from a temp to hire position because the employment agency that I got the position through and the company had a conflict with each other that they were not able to resolve. So the way they resolved everything was to pull everyone associated with the employment agency at the site. A part of me felt like I was not in a reunion friendly job situation.  But I found myself surprised that looking forward to my reunion was part of what kept me from just curling up in a ball and trying to avoid the world.

I started joking that I could be like Romy and Michelle and pretend to be the person who invented bit coin.  When  first entered the room I did not even recognize anyone and had to introduce myself to people. I shocked myself by responding that I am a writer when people asked me what I do. It may not be how I pay my bills but it is what I am passionate about and it does keep me pretty busy.  At the end of the day that there really was no drama, just people wanting to reconnect. Exposing myself to reunion themed stories helped a little.  But I do need to confess that the tequila shots that I took before heading to the reunion helped a lot.