Why You Should Never Attend High School Reunions

I wonder what it is like for the high school graduating class of Bill Gates when it comes reunion time. Does anyone bother going? Does Bill Gates go?

If you are ever invited to your high school reunion, you need to ask yourself two questions. Am I rich? Am I thin? If you can't answer yes to both those questions, you should not go. You won't like being there.

The problem with high school reunions is that it puts you back in the peer group that you left behind a long time ago. As such, you will immediately measure your fortunes against those of other people in the group. Since there is almost always someone better than you, you will inevitably feel that your life has been an utter waste and failure. If you had the misfortune to graduate with the world's richest man, you are pretty much fucked.

You should spare yourself this pointless inventory of where your life has led you. The whole reason I hated high school is because of this social sorting out of winners and losers. Who wants to return to that? Even if you went on to graduate Harvard, make a million on Wall Street, complete an Ironman, and marry a supermodel, all you can do is inspire envy and hatred. When your portfolio crashes in the next recession or your wife ends up screwing a high schooler, there are people out there delighting in your misfortune because they can feel a bit better at the next reunion.

High school was the worst period of my life. I remember my mother telling me these were the best years of my life, and I should enjoy them while they lasted. I realize now the reason she said this was because she was like everyone else in the world and hated working. But at the time, it filled me with dread. Life gets worse than this?

I am happy to say that life has not been worse for me but much better since those high school years. I have had my successes and failures but none of them have involved divorce or incarceration. But a primary reason I have enjoyed my life so much is precisely because I never measured it against anyone else's life. This practice is a waste because you can always say you are better than this bunch of people, and people can always say the same about you. Bill Gates might be rich, but he is still a geeky ass nerd everyone wants to punch in the face. If he ever got pancreatic cancer, people would cheer. He will never be cool.

And that is the tragedy of high school. Most people turn out to be exactly what they were back then. In high school, I was a social misfit that never fit in and spent all his free time working and reading books and doing his own thing. Twenty years later, I am still the same. The jocks have changed as they got old and fat. The nerds are still nerds. And the ones on all those high school committees and the yearbook are the same ones who teach school and organize reunions and attend civic functions, etc. Then, there is that large chunk who are now in prison. These were the ones doing drugs in the back of the schoolhouse between classes. Then, there is the Great Reversal.

The Great Reversal is the ugly chick that got hot, or the quiet guy who became famous, or the poor kid that struck it rich. It is like their whole lives have been lived as a sort of revenge. There is both triumph and tragedy in this. Their success is tinged with bitterness. It is as if nothing can ever overcome what was done to them during those early years.

Middle age is the great leveler as bodies sag under gravity, and people live long enough to experience misfortune. That is one of the good things of getting older. You become more secure in who you are. I don't know if this is because you learn to quit caring about your status, or you see others in your peer group finally going through some shit. When you see a former jock with a colostomy bag, you don't envy him even if he went on to become a Hall of Famer. Mortality is the great equalizer.

Finally, high school reunions are about nostalgia, and nostalgia is a form of sadness. I don't cherish memories because they end up leaving me depressed. Nostalgia lies because it tells you that the best times of your life are behind you. But I know better. The best time of your life is the present because the present is all that exists. Living in the future or the past is the same as living in some delusion. This is the jock who still wears his letter jacket and drives his muscle car. Talk about arrested development.

People cherish their peaks, and the saddest people are those who peak early and decline from there. The child star would be a splendid example of this. If they are smart, they pull a Jodie Foster and go on from there. Other people are stuck like Gary Coleman. If high school was your peak, that is sad.

Most people turn out to be average. They go to school, join the military, get a job. They go through a succession of sex partners and find one tolerable to marry. They pop out some kids and get a house. Then, they develop their secret addictions and vices (and not so secret addictions and vices) to make it all tolerable--beer after work, whiskey at the country club, a few lines of coke in the bathroom, prescription drugs (the favorite of housewives), internet porn, crystal meth with gay sex partner, affairs, etc. Some put up a good front by going to church and attending PTA meetings.

As for me, I always thought this way of living was really sad. Despite what you see in Grosse Point Blank, the hitman doesn't see the happy families and regret his lifestyle choices. He sees the schoolboard member smoking a joint out by his car and bitching about how fat his wife has gotten. There's a reason Indiana Jones never got married. (Yeah, he did get hitched at the end of Crystal Skull which is as good as being dead. You left feeling sad. Three movies was enough.)

I'm sure there are those who would consider my neverending adolescence to be really sad, but those are the women. All the men frankly tell me that they envy my freedom. And this is why I love my life so much now. I am free. I expect my girlfriend to dump me anyday now because I know I am never going to give up that freedom. Never. Being able to do with your time and money exactly what you want to do is the sweetest thing in the world. To live for no one but yourself is the best way to live and be happy. Going to a high school reunion will only bring condemnation from women for my selfishness (and a few phone numbers.) I don't need this.

The reality is that we all pursue the happiness that fits for us. Unfortunately, we can't choose both A and B. By choosing to be a lawyer you are also choosing not to be a doctor. By choosing to be a husband and a provider, you are also choosing not to be Indiana Jones. We don't feel any regret over these choices until we are in the presence of our peers, and we begin to wonder. Could things have been different? Could things have been better? But you can't have it all. No matter what choices you make in life, there will always be a certain degree of buyer's remorse. I bet even Bill Gates regrets not getting more pussy back in the day or seeing where chess could have taken him. You make your choices and live with where those choices take you. For me, the big regret was not buying Microsoft stock instead of spending my money on a car and a computer. Otherwise, I am quite happy with my life.

Never second guess your life. That's the whole point. Live without regret. Own your choices, and don't ever give a damn what other people do with their lives. It is your life, and you are the only person you have to please. And instead of going to the high school reunion, go get in a workout or work more hours because in the end it is all about being rich and thin. Seriously.

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