Reunions

One of the drawbacks of having been transplanted across the largest ocean in the world at age 14 is not being able to attend the reunion of the high school I attended for six months, and not see how the boy I had a crush on turned into a man, or see my friends that I've lost touch with but I still think about sometimes, as opposed to friends from back then who send me Christmas cards and e-mail, I mean, I was only at that school for six months, but at least about a sixth of the people there were people who started and finished  junior high with me. But an inconsistency between the school system where I spent the bulk of my required schooling age during the time I was there (7th and 8th grade were junior high) and the school system in Japan (what would be considered 7th, 8th and 9th grade were junior high) makes it so that I was actually attending junior high (in Japan) after having attended high school (in the U.S.), which means that I get to attend junior high school reuinions from my school in Japan when they are held, which just totally does not intice a great deal of excitement for me because I was rather unhappy in my Japanese junior high school, I mean, here's this kid who was more or less adjusted to American society, and bring her back to a world of school uniforms and teachers whose (nonexistant) concepts of feminism were last updated SOMETIME AROUND THE BRONZE AGE and where seniority among students is enforced with a passion, like would you BOYS (I use this word without restraint since you're like, um, 14) please wait until you can convince me you have FACIAL HAIR BEFORE YOU CHEW OUT 12 YEAR OLDS BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T USE FORMAL LANGUAGE, and where actually pointing out that poking fun at the kid with a borderline learning disability was probably not a very nice thing to do would get you ostracised, like, I am not the one with a hero complex, you are the one who is suffering from OVERCOMPENSATION for some, um, concealed SHORTCOMING, SO TO SPEAK, anyway, that kind of transplantation is going to cause problems. It was really a relief when I graduated and started high school, and left most of that total idiocy behind, and although high school had its drawbacks, overall I think it is safe to say that I enjoyed high school, probably because it was an all girls' school for area overachievers (I use the term overachievers in a liberal sense, not as in "will have to be put on suicide watch if she doesn't make it to University of Tokyo School of Medicine on her first try" but more like as in "making a serious and realistic consideration to attend university after graduating high school") and so most of the people had better things to do than to have silly cliques and pick on people who had trouble reading or doing integrations (actually, being that kind of school, hardly anyone had trouble reading, but some couldn't do integrations), or care that people had silly cliques or had trouble reading or doing integrations (actually, we helped each other sometimes, which, I suppose, counts as caring, but you know what I'm trying to say.) So when I got e-mail from a friend from high school that there was going to be a reunion, I answered that I would, yes, be there, and then the friend e-mailed back saying that she couldn't be there, but she'd let the person organizing the thing know that I would, and so I am thinking great, what if none of my friends are there, but then again, since I was good friends with different groups, like  the people from swim team or the people from English Club (I started hanging out with them because some of my friends from swim team were there) or the people from choir (laugh if you will, I sang alto for two years), so I figured surely someone I was friends with and would not ignore me would be there.

So the reunion was on a Saturday evening in a public hall-esque place, and I got there way too early because I'd headed straight there after finishing work, and the only people there were the ones collecting the admission fee, and I realized that they were all people who were in my homeroom class during my last year there, and only then did I discover that it was people from that class who were heading the whole affair, and I felt kind of guilty for not having helped out in any way but at the same time a tiny bit angry that no one from that class had ever actually SAID anything to me, so that I actually COULD have done stuff like send e-mail to 400 people.

So there were several teachers there, and about 70 students out of a class of 400 or so, which is a pretty good turnout when you think about it, and there was a buffet, and the teachers got up on the stage and spoke briefly about what they were doing, and then the students got up one by one and spoke briefly about what they were doing, and there were quite a few that were married, and with children, and there were also quite a few who had become teachers, and some of them were married and were teachers, and some were in commercial research, and I was really quite impressed at how successful everyone was and how beautiful everyone looked, and how interesting it was that the people I thought rather obnoxious, the clique types, the "I'm always right" types, the "bulldozer types" who commit verbal homicide against people they disagree with, and seemed to have delusions of ruling the school had not shown up at all, and I find out later that these people had not been very sucessful, which kind of got me thinking about the types of people who attend high school reunions.

1. Location. Not having to arrange a transcontinental flight helps make it easier to attend reunions. Living on the same body of land is also a big plus. If you live out of town, having one or more parents in the same general area as when you were in school is immensely helpful. It goes without saying that if you live with your parents in the same house as when you were in high school (like me), you have no excuse not to attend.

2. Finances. You have to be able to afford the participation fee. Tasteful (though not necessarily new) clothes are also a must. Bonus points if you (unlike me) own a designer label handbag.

3. Appearence. You are expected to look a little older than ten years ago. You are NOT expected to look like it has been twenty years and not ten. For various twisted issues in Japanese society, showing up in a visibly advanced stage of pregnancy is a symbol of major success, unless you fail to hide the fact that you're actually going to be a single mother, which will, for various twisted issues in modern Japanese society, brand you as some kind of slut, as opposed to someone who opts to have an abortion, and also as opposed to the father of the baby.

4. Career. This kind of goes along with 3. Being a teacher is nice. Being an accountant is nice. Being a sucessful businesswoman, preferably in a technically oriented environment, is also nice. Key words are "professional" and "specialized". Being a doctor is nice, but it helps to be in a speciality people are familiar with, like OB or pediatrics or surgery or internal medicine or opthamology. Saying "I'm in radiology" will get you quizzical looks, usually followed by "but I thought technologists took X-rays, not doctors...".  "Full time homemaker, married and with children" is probably going to evoke looks of jealousy. Don't ask me why, that's how it works.

5. Knowing about the event is quite helpful. My best friends from high school, the anime fan types (I won't say otaku, because there's a bit of a negative image attached to this in Japan), the artist types, the ones who would send hand drawn New Year's cards, were not there at all. None. Zero. I later found out that none of them knew about it. (This was a kind of unofficial event, and people were instructed to call their friends. It's kind of my fault, I found out about it, but I was too busy to let anyone else know about it.) I saw these anime/ artist types last night. Most of them only drew or painted a couple times of week at the most, but the twisted sense of humor was the same. We had a blast.
 

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