Get Some New Friends
Moving on from one’s high school circle
Fall… The holiday season is finally here!
It must be nice to enjoy the holidays… I don’t.
I’ll admit it. I have a troubled relationship with the holidays. No, I don’t have Charlie Brown’s Christmas blues, nor do I have disdain for Thanksgiving due to some repressed childhood memory involving turkey. In fact, most of my holiday memories from around this time of year are pleasant. But what sends me rushing to the restroom in a fit of nausea during this season are the posts on Instagram and Facebook where I see the same dozen popular kids from high school having a good time. They’re still down there, drinking in that same friend’s basement. Nearly 10 years since high school ended, and these same insufferable people are still getting together and having fun.
Before you label me as Ebeneezer Scrooge reincarnated, please hear my case. I had to deal with these jocks and jockettes every day for 6 years (some of them for 13). Through those years I was made to watch in horror as they threw parties, drank, had relationships, had sex, and properly threw a football (a skill I have yet to master). Those slightly out of focus Nikon COOLPIX shots uploaded to Facebook the morning after a party are etched into my mind. How I can so vividly recall the FOMO I experienced on those Sunday mornings, logging onto Facebook to see the fun I wasn’t having, nor was invited to have. (And this was before the acronym FOMO existed!) So why do I need to be reminded of this group’s mediocrity every Thanksgiving eve when they pack the hometown hangouts?
And why are they still getting together all the time? Did four years of college do nothing to expand their network of friends? At high school graduation, weren’t we encouraged to set forth from the confines of suburban New Jersey life and see the rest of the world? Make a change? Meet new people? Have new experiences? Find friends that we haven’t known since the Bush Administration?
I am just 2 years away from my 10-year high school reunion, pending someone actually organizes something. Do I look forward to seeing any of the random assortment of 850-something people who I last saw on a hot day in June 2013? Absolutely not. Do I plan on going to a reunion if there is a one? Absolutely.
Call it hypocritical, but I completely intend on being at my 10-year reunion, despite my unhealthy kvetching about the popular kids. Unlike the days of old where a reunion was the only place to find out what Betty and Bobby were up to, today we have Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn to keep up with the high school Joneses. I pretty much know what much of my graduating class is up to because I have failed to remove all of them from my social networks. (If you weren’t at the Capitol on January 6, you’re in the clear!) So again, why do I plan on attending?
I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that reunion. If it was possible to simultaneously observe every crowd that comes that night, while not be approached or seen, I’d be a happy camper. But even as a visible and active participant, I think the schadenfreude I’d get from seeing the same social groups act the same way they did a decade earlier would be enough to keep me entertained. I’d have more confirmation bias than the average Fox News viewer.
Seeing those 18-year-old bullies in 28-year-old bodies would make my night. And I’m sure the DJ would play the same music from our prom to make us all feel nostalgic for our glory days. I’d be reminded of how much I disliked that music then, and I’d look around the room and be reminded how much I disliked most of high school then. I didn’t have the John Hughes experience. I’d think about how I’m so much better than everyone in this room… and I’d be right!
Except, there’s one problem. I didn’t hate high school as much as I like to think I did. At the time, aside from math class, I had a mostly decent high school experience. Sure, I wasn’t universally loved, and I don’t consider it the peak part of my life. But it surely wasn’t the worst part either. I tend to look at some parts of my past with rose-tinted glasses, and then I look at other parts of my past with cynicism and negativity. High school is a prime example.
I criticize those same dozen high school elites who are still getting together on the holidays to drink and be merry. I ask myself again and again why they haven’t expanded their social network/ And then I look at my list of groomsmen for my upcoming wedding…
I have a best man and seven groomsmen. Two of the groomsmen are my brothers. Aside from one person in the remaining six, we all went to the same elementary school, 3 minutes from my childhood home. I have known the one non-elementary school person since I was 11, and he was also in our school system. So, in terms of my closest social network, I haven’t really expanded too far since the days of NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys. And yes, we are still getting together to have fun during the holiday season.
So, I guess I should take it easy on the old high school elites. Am I so different from them? Should I really be nauseated by their occasional merriment? Probably not.
This holiday season, feel free to spend your nights with those you love. It doesn’t matter how long you have known them, just so long as they make you happy.
And don’t let an elitist like me tell you otherwise.