schadenfreude

2002-06-25

It's almost time for my tenth high school reunion. I can't believe it's already been ten years. That's what people always say about reunions, but I'm saying it mostly because I can't believe that I'm an adult. I still feel like I'm 19 in a sense, although I know that I couldn't hack my life at 19 now.� If I was a truly mature person, I probably wouldn't take the time to even mention how this makes me feel.� I don't dwell on high school or anything, but I do find that the end of the story (or at least the latest chapter) of everyone's life is very reassuring.

I have friends who had a very different experience in high school than I did.� They're reunions seem to be truly that - a reuniting of old friends.� My friends either dropped out of high school or ran away screaming after graduation, vowing never to come back.� Not a single one of my close friends showed up to the last reunion.� I've mostly lost touch with everyone, which is too bad.� For some reason, we all had a very Ghost World type "us versus them" attitude to the rest of our class.�

In case anyone ever reads this who is in high school (especially a public high school), take note: live for these reunions. You may think that reunions are a gathering of all of the popular kids so they can show off their fancy cars, spouses, educations, etc. That, thank goodness, is not the case. Yes, they are basically comprised of the popular kids (which is too bad), but instead of being wildly successful, they are very comfortingly average.� I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Here's the highlights of the last one:

  • Most football players were both fat and balding (this is at age 23!)
  • Two guys knocked up strippers, one of the strippers was 35 (and she looked like it had been a rough 35 years)
  • One cheerleader looked like her body had been replaced by a 200 lb. sack of potatoes
  • The really fat girl that I always felt bad for was married with a new baby and was ecstatically happy (unfortunately, she showed me the birth pictures from the hospital - I don't need to see anyone's birth in detail - ever)
  • There were many more heartwarming cases of the high school downtrodden finding love and happiness

The fact that I take great pleasure in the misfortune of others does, indeed, make me a bad person.� It's something I'll need to work on.� I find it very comforting because I never thought that it would turn out this way when I was in high school.� I had (or should it be have?) a real inferiority complex.� No one shoved me into lockers or anything, in fact I think that I scared most of my classmates.� I was somehow under the impression that "those" people had a successful life mapped out for them by fate.� Because I was not one of those people, I thought that my life was somehow harder.� Maybe it was, in a sense.� I worked full time through college, I even slept in my car for a month.� But the rich and popular kids didn't end up any better than I did even though our paths might have been different.� And I find that extremely comforting.

�

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