Reunion, the Before Part

I was planning to mow the grass in my yard on Saturday afternoon. Really, I was. But then something happened.

It all began with my decision to cook a pork roast Friday night. I bought two 2-pound roasts Friday. Friday night I put them into my slow cooker. I poured cider vinegar over them, patted them with salt and pepper, and poured more vinegar over them. I put the lid on the cooker, set it to Low, and went to bed.

When I awoke Saturday morning, the house was filled with the aroma of pork BBQ. Mmmm. I got up and took the roasts out of the cooker and put them on a platter. Using forks, I pulled the meat apart. I reserved two cups of juice from the cooker and discarded the rest. I put the meat back into the cooker. I mixed brown sugar and crushed red pepper flakes into the juice and poured it over the meat, and put the lid on the cooker.

The next step was to make white, Alabama-style BBQ sauce. I needed some vinegar, which I was almost out of, so I thought, “No problem, I’ll drive to the Martins store and get vinegar.” There were several other things I wanted to buy there, anyway.

In Martins, I immediately ran into Homer, a friend I hadn’t seen in three or four years. So naturally, I wanted to chat with him and catch up with what he and his wife, Sara, had been up to. That conversation delayed me for a few crucial minutes, just long enough to prevent me from making a quick escape from the store. If it weren’t for stopping to talk to Homer, I probably wouldn’t have run into Douglas.

But a couple minutes after I left Homer, I was walking down an aisle when who did I see walking toward me – it was Douglas. I hadn’t seen Doug in five or six years. He and his wife, Cynthia, were in town for their high school reunion. Doug and I had been best friends in school; I think we met in the third grade, and we were pals until we graduated high school and went our separate ways. So, of course, that means his high school reunion was also my high school reunion.

I hadn’t planned on going to my high school reunion. I have to confess something here, which may frighten some of my readers. It was my 50th high school reunion. Yes, I admit it, folks; I’m a geezer. I hang my head in shame. I’ve tried to live right and eat the right foods and not smoke (at least, not since I was 38) and what good did it do me because here I am, anyway: a geezer. I’m a young geezer – it’s that age where younger (but still middle-aged) people will be friends until they learn my age, and then they can’t get away fast enough.

I haven’t attended any of my class reunions. Most of the people in my senior class were people that I knew by face only. They were only classmates. We didn’t have any other connection. We didn’t talk to each other. Kids at my high school were kind of cliquish. I didn’t belong to any cliques, nor did I have any desire to pretend to be on some rung of a social ladder. I just lived for the day high school would be over.

Doug and Cynthia asked me to have lunch with them at Panera Bread, which was next to the hotel where they were staying. So I did, and that’s where I ran into another high school friend named Wayne, and his wife Carol. They were in town to attend the reunion. I knew they would browbeat me into going to the reunion, and they did, all of them; they browbeat me and browbeat me, until I said, “What can I say to stop this browbeating?” And it was, “Tell us you’re coming to the reunion.” So here I am, ready to go. The reunion starts in 50 minutes. I have to open my senior class yearbook (yeah, I still have it) and spend a few minutes looking at faces and names. It’s a given that I won’t recognize anyone’s face. I’d feel bad if I didn’t remember their names, either.

But I’ll go and make the best of it. There may be something interesting I can blog about afterward. It will probably involve me dropping a plate of food into my lap or spilling a glass of rum and Coke down the front of my shirt. Oy.