My high school reunion occurred two weeks ago and all I can say is that it went off without a hitch! Ok, actually there was one tiny hitch and one tiny piece of drama, which I'll reveal a little later.
I had an appointment like 1.5 hours before my friend "C" was to have arrived at my place. The people I was with asked if I was excited to be attending my reunion and I told them that I'm not the type of person to show a lot of excitement. I just told them, "We'll see how it goes."
My friend arrived to pick me up and we headed towards the country to a winery we had never been to before, which is on the border of the town we grew up in and the next small town over. As we approached our destination, I could tell that there weren't very many cars in the parking lot. As we made our way up the stairs, we approached a table where one of our classmates was and I picked up my name tag, which had my senior grad photo on it, in black and white. I then helped my friend look for her name tag when I noticed the name tag of a few others who I knew for sure were coming. Then as I looked down again, I saw the name of one particular male classmate...the one who I had a small crush on. OMG..."G" is coming! What am I going to do? What am I going to say?
As we made our way into the courtyard, all we see are these beautiful vineyards in front of us! I mean, they were picturesque and I now wish I would've taken more photos of our view. :( About 5 or 10 minutes later, my friend 'H' texts me and my cousin 'M' texts me to tell me they're on their way. Within 15 minutes or so, I see this tall, good-looking, muscular guy walk in with his BFF since childhood, who also graduated with us. It's "G," my former-not-so-former crush! I whisper to my good friends "C" and "I" that he's here and all they do is smile.
So for the most part, the seven of us--including two spouses of two of my classmates--stood by this one table talking to each other and during the entire time, I tried sneaking several glances towards "G." He was surrounded by his BFF and two other classmates, including one female. But then at another point, another female classmate stood next to him talking his ear off for probably 30 minutes and then the next thing I know is that I think he might've been alone for a brief second! UGH...THAT should've clearly been my cue or opportunity to go talk to him, but I blew my chance! :(
You don't know how many times I wanted to approach him and talk to him. Growing up, from elementary through high school, we never had a class together. We knew of each other, but never once had a conversation of any kind. Ok, so maybe I said one word to him during the first day of 11th grade. I walked into the multipurpose room to go pick up my schedule while some of our class officers or classmates affiliated with student government were helping distribute class schedules. He was standing at the table where my schedule was, so I picked my schedule up and probably muttered something like, "Hi" or "Thanks."
"G" was a guy who I could never figure out. I always wondered, "Is he stuck up or just shy?"I asked my friend "H" the same question a few years back and she couldn't answer the question either. He used to hang out with the booksmart/smarties (I'll dub him 'Mr. Smartie' here), some of the jocks and the so-called popular "in-crowd." Unfortunately (and thankfully), I was never part of that crowd. I "beat to my own drum" and wasn't a follower. When I was younger, I also thought that I was way out of his league. Yes, I literally felt like Molly Ringwald's character in "Sixteen Candles" and "Pretty in Pink"! My most vivid memories of him were that he was a nice, sweet, neutral-somewhat-preppyish guy, who probably made friends with everyone. So how come we were never friends then? Simple. I was too shy and self-conscious about talking to guys who I thought were super cute and who I thought I never had a chance with.
Now that we're a lot older, I seem to think that he and I have very similar qualities. When he had his FB account (he deleted it last fall), I could tell he has always been close to his family and childhood friends, as have I. Another uncanny irony is that we were both born on the same day, except I'm exactly 7 months older than him. Ok, I guess I always did have a thing for 'younger' men! ;-)
I think my whole point to this is that while I was at the reunion, I felt the same awkwardness I felt when I was back in high school. I mean, I had no problem being around my close group of friends or my cousin, who was a jock back in the day, but also hung out with many of the same people that 'G' did, aka the "in-crowd." Anyway, while I was there, I still sort of felt like I was being excluded in some way.
During the reunion, I went up to a few people and chatted with them, and they came up to me as well. What I also noticed was that most people were going up to "G." I don't think I remember seeing him approach anyone. To my surprise, he and his BFF left early, about 1.5-2 hours before our reunion was scheduled to end. I clearly thought they'd stay until the end. Oh well. There went my last chance to talk to "G" and I blew it, again! :( Or did I? More about this later in this blog.
Back to the reunion: only 33 of us attended and we had a graduating class of close to 250! And during our last reunion, we had about 65 show up. This time around, one classmate told me that she thinks many people didn't attend this reunion because the word didn't get out sooner. Yes, we had a FB reunion page and other classmates invited others to join, but it seems that some people just couldn't make it because they already had other plans, or they couldn't afford to go because they now have families or they honestly just didn't want to go.
The one thing I'll say, once again, is that our class wasn't organized...never was and some things haven't changed! I think it's unfortunate that the organizer waited until about a month before the reunion date to let classmates know how much the tickets were going to cost, etc. I think she finally spoke up and sent everyone the link because other classmates were complaining on FB if our reunion was going to happen or not. A few other classmates mentioned to me that this reunion should have been planned at least a year in advance!
Oh yeah, and what kind of reunion would it be if there wasn't any drama? ;-) At one point, I went to go sit down with two of my friends and I noticed another classmate dancing with two other classmates. I thought to myself, "Oh, she decided to come after all." Probably about 15 minutes later, my cousin comes up to me and tells me that this classmate, the one who showed up late and who had been dancing, was escorted out of the winery because the organizer didn't want her there. This was the same classmate the organizer had some 'beef' with back in school and obviously still had the same feelings towards her recently. I don't know what the problem was between those two, but I think it's time for them to grow up!
In all honestly, I still can't kick this feeling that I'm still attracted to "G" after all this time. I felt bad that I didn't talk to him at the reunion, so about three days later I emailed him. A week went by and I thought, "Ok, I'm never going to hear from him because I emailed him last summer and he didn't respond." So about three days ago, I see this email in my "inbox," which I thought was from my editor, but when I looked closer, it was from him! Because I was so busy with work and trying to finish two tasks by Friday's deadline, I didn't open the email until two days ago. What's funny is that the entire day I was stressing out and feeling nervous was the same day I opened his email. However, it was also because I was trying to make my work deadline, but I was also worried as to what he replied.
What I basically told him in the email was that I hoped he didn't think I was stuck up because I didn't go talk to him. I also said that I'm not sure why we never spoke to each other while we attended all the same schools together, but that I always knew he was a nice, sweet guy. And yes, I mentioned the small crush I had on him. His response was really nice, which actually made me feel a lot better after my stressful day. :)
He apologized for not emailing me back sooner because he had been busy visiting family and friends out here on the West Coast before he returned to the East Coast. He thanked me for sending him a copy of the hilarious slideshow that was played at our reunion, which he and his BFF missed seeing. He also thanked me for the kind words I said in the email and said that he didn't think I was or am stuck up. The final thing he said was that it was too bad we weren't able to catch up, but that hopefully our paths would cross again.
I'm a realist, so I'm not holding my breath or expecting anything to happen between us, but I'm grateful that I finally got the nerve--even if it was through email--to tell him how I felt. I don't have many guy friends, so it'd be cool to finally have him as a real friend since I've "known" him for many years. And who knows, maybe we'll finally be able to catch up when I travel back east to visit my friend "S," which will hopefully (*keeping my fingers crossed*) be next spring. :-)
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