It's been what, 17 years since I marched up the stage on that centric Con Hall (was it Con Hall? I'm confused) we all know. For three years that rectangular space inside the main compound, flanked by old classrooms and a sorry excuse for a canteen, served mainly as a shortcut for me to get from one side to another. Sometimes we congregated in huddles, talking about things most important to high schoolers. On special occassions Con Hall was a dance practice space, or some other special number practice space. I don't remember exactly all the things we used to do there, my classmates and I.
I remember a non-gay beauty pageant they held, the first time in the history of the school, I believe. Straight guys in drag, ramping it up in a makeshift catwalk. It was made more exciting by the fact that the relative "studs" (or those that passed as ones anyway) looked better with make up on. I forget who won, but seeing these boys in sportswear and evening gowns almost made up for the fact that I was actually in the school marching band holding the annoying lyre. I don't know why I joined, in hindsight I must have been taking some mind-altering substance, like kamote. I hate kamote.
School romances, urban legends, first loves borne and instantly killed - these were the fun things that compensated for the lack of a proper school library. I was afraid to enter that room; like a haunted house in a passing peryahan just in time for the town fiesta. I know there are no real ghosts, but just the same I wouldn't take my chances. Well, actually I did enter it that first and only time, to pull out a rotting and dated Encyclopedia Britannica volume to research about Japan. Which was a monumental fail, as I have always hated Social Studies.
We got the grades, moved to some form of higher education, some saw it their fate to get hitched immediately. We left the confines of secondary school's feigned innocence and went out to find our places under the sun. Years pass by, and through some quirks of nature or some bug in the universe's system, from time to time I manage to see some of my classmates and have the occasional drink. It wasn't so often as in my head it was every leap year, save for some really close friends with whom I make it a point to see with semi-regularity.
The other night I saw two of them again, where I was forcibly coerced into confirming attendance to the next reunion. I say forcibly because they asked like fifty million times and I said something like "No", "I'll have to check my schedule," "Maybe", and it's hundred and one variations for the first hundredth time they asked. Then something clicked inside my teeny tiny brain and I said "Possibly", then turned to a full-blown YES (I guess I shouted a little) because it was getting late and they weren't stopping and I still have deadlines to meet.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to attend. Three things keep me: 1) you always hold the reunions in December when the gods of cheap airline fares are on leave and therefore the published rates online are a bitch; 2) if I go in December I would only have to go specially for the reunion, and if I pay that damned bitch amount I would like to have something else to do to maximize my stay but all my family's here and I don't want to spend Christmas and New Year at my grandmother's house where it's always dark; and 3) my Decembers are always hectic.
BUT, and that is a large but, let's see. Maybe I'll consider crossing out "Attended high school reunion" off my To Do list. However, I will not participate in a group singing rendition of "Hotel California". Over my dead toenails.
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