Old School

I was a little ambivalent about attending my five-year college reunion. After all, I’d gone to homecoming the year after I graduated and felt like I might as well have just gone to the nearest high-school parking lot to lurk around. At least there the girls would be impressed that I could buy Zima for them. The looks I got from the students back in the fall of 1999 said, “Tailgating at a D-III football game, rooting for a school at which you’re no longer enrolled: You’re a sad little man.” But momentum amongst my friends grew for the five-year reunion, and so it was that I found myself once again rolling onto the Colby College campus.

The five-year reunion was different from homecoming in one very important way: There were no students around to make me feel old. Or at least, not many. And the ones who were on campus didn’t make me feel old, they made me feel cool. It’s good to see that Colby’s nerdfirmative action program is really taking shape. We’re talking kids who look like the love spawn of Rick Moranis and a graphing calculator, and this is coming from a guy who wrote for the school newspaper and has seen the movie Rad 15 times. It’s possible that Colby has hired Stephen Hawking to run the admissions department. I think I speak for all of the less intellectually gifted alumni when I say that, like, um, I don’t, you know, understand that…and stuff.

Speaking of dumb alumni (dumb like a fox with transitions like that one), many brain cells perished as my classmates and I took advantage of our above-the-law status. There’s nothing like spending a weekend at school when you’ve already graduated and they want you to give them money. It’s an entirely different dynamic than when you’re a student, and you’re always scurrying to turn down your music or stash that Rodin you stole from the art museum and made into a bong. “What are they gonna do, take away my diploma?” was the rhetorical question of the weekend.

For example, my friend Pete and I walked into a dorm carrying two tables we’d stolen from the student union to use for drinking games. We both reflexively stopped when we saw the security officer standing there glaring at us. Then we looked at one another, shrugged and continued on our way upstairs with the pilfered furniture. Sorry, security, you’re out of your jurisdiction. I’ve driven across the county line into Alumniville. Also falling under the category of “things that would’ve gotten us on double-secret probation five years ago,” two Class of ’99ers stole the school president’s golf cart and drove it down to the field house for our dinner. The main rule was “Don’t burn the place down,” and my friend Steve came close to violating that one when he marched into a lounge carrying lit fireworks. Hey, Steve’s a lawyer, not a common-sense salesman.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. We’re not in college anymore, and our priorities have certainly changed. The mighty river of responsibility has eroded our youthful exuberance with worries of jobs, families and retirement funds. For instance, back in school we used to sit at tables for hours on end trying to throw dice into one another’s beer cups. So juvenile. Well, things have changed. We don’t play beer die anymore, OK? Now we play flip cups.

My only qualm with the reunion was the dinner, which cost $43.50 and featured a slab of chalky chicken covered in what was supposed to be a sauce but had congealed into a thick jelly. The next week, I complained over e-mail to my friends that if I’m going to pay $43.50 for a piece of cold chicken, it ought to at least be served by a naked lady. To which one of my friends replied, “We actually stopped at Kahoots [a strip club near Hartford] on the way home and I was able to get out of there with a chicken sandwich dinner and boobies for a $25 spot. I say for the 10-year reunion, we just go to Kahoots!”

Reunion was a great trip back to college days, but I’m glad I’m not a student anymore. No matter how much fun you’re having in school, in the back of your mind there’s always a test you should be studying for or a paper you should be writing. It never ends. Whereas with writing, you can just go home whenever...you...run...out of space. ∂