Member-only story
Dear Teenage Me, On the Night of Your 30 Year High School Reunion
I see you, my Gen X child.
I know what you’re thinking.
I’ve just told you that you had one of the best nights of your life…at your 30th high school reunion, an occasion you swore you would never, ever go to.
(Never, ever. That’s such a cute phrase. Not to mention naïve.)
And, it gets better. These people you suffered through high school with are (I know, you’re never going to believe me) genuinely great to be around.
They’re funny, smart, easy to talk to. Turns out, you have a lot more in common than you thought.
But now, in the “me decade” of the ’80s, I know you’re just trying to fit in. To feel accepted and seen in your small school where the same kids you stood with at the bus stop on your first day of elementary school will be the same kids in most of your classes and the same kids you’ll cross the graduation stage with 12 years later.
Yeah, newsflash (or Spoiler Alert, as we say in this era): despite the hell of algebra and the horrors of gym class, you do graduate. You’ll go to a college where, unlike Cheers, nobody knows your name (at first) and then you get a job, and then another, and maybe a few more after that. You might lose a few of them along the way for various…
