My High School Reunion - was I Destined to Remain a Geek for Life?

Does anyone out there really enjoy the torture we put ourselves through for the any high school reunion? The feeling of not knowing what to wear to obsessing in the wonder if everyone else will be carrying the extra 5 pounds on their hips like I am. Who needs it? Well I can tell you this, I went to my 20^th and I am glad I did, because it made me understand that I don't need the latest fashion or look like a starving model just because the homecoming queen does! I have found that it is true...Yes there is life after high school!

I missed out on the 5^th and 10^th reunions, but I did make it to the 20^th! I really did not know what to expect. But strangely, I was really not to worried. I felt that finally, the shy, geeky, bookworm from the marching band finally had shook all those demons that had haunted here in school. The taunts from the jocks, the looks of disdain from the cheerleaders and even the rebuff from the hunk in chemistry class, I was well and truly over them. And you know what? It seemed as though life had played it own little tricks on the very people who had thought they were better than me, simply by virtue of their place in the high school food chain! Let me elaborate.

Lets start with the Jock. Now Jock was a really good football player, in fact he was a star player. All the girls liked him, he was after all a Football Stud. Jock of course only had eyes for the cheerleaders or the football groupies. I fell into neither category. But I becamse a target for Jock simply because I sat in front of him in English class. So I suffered though listening to him tell me how great he was and how lame I was, being a marching band geek and all. How he was going to get a football scholarship toUSC while I was at best going to be working at McDonalds until I was 40, unmarried and unloved because no guy would want a band geek. Fast forward 20 years. Jock is now a very overweight, twice divorced USC dropout. He is however, a very successful car salesperson. He came up to me and apologized for how nasty he was to me in school. I told him I wanted to thank him because he made me a stronger person. Jock and I are now friends, and I am pleased to say that he has at last found happiness with a lovely wife and is the proud dad for a darling little toddler.

Then there was the Cheerleader. You undoubtedly understand why I did not fit into her social set. Cheery was the typical stereotype of a cheerleader; blonde, blue eyed, great figure and all round guy magnet. She really invented Valley-speak before the valley did. "Like, Ohmygawd, did you see me do that triple handspring layout back flip flop with the quadrupale twist? I was so cool!" Like, gag me with whatever is handy. Anyway, Cheery thought us band geeks were only good for playing music at the football game so she could show off her latest gyration. She and her group of hangers on always looked down on the rest of us with their noses held high. It is amazing she never got a nosebleed. Fast forward 20 years. Cheery is still as snotty as she ever was, but the sad part is now that the looks have faded and the cheer uniform has been hung up, she is living on her own, a bitter and sarcastic shell of what she once was. One would find it laughable, if not so sad. Cheery looked at the pictures of the kids we all were showing, and a couple of times I thought I saw her eyes mist over.

And what about me, the other band geeks and everyone else who did not quite fit in? We are, for the most part, happy with our lives. Sure we all moaned about the surly teenagers we have, the demanding boss, even the spouse that drives us nuts. We complained about the extra weight we carried, the mortgage, the economy, all the angst that us coming into middle age high school refugees face in our lives. And you know what? We would not trade any of it for anything.

So for all of you who never fit in, were part of high school geekdom.....Rejoice!!! There is life after High School!