As reunions go, you could do a helluva lot worse. I recognized most everyone; the women are definitely better-preserved than the men – some of them looked like they’d aged, oh, two or three years tops, but everyone has held up very nicely – and people’s reaction to me generally broke down to some admixture of “OHMIGOD” and “HOLY SHIT!” Which, you know, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, then or now.
It was amazing. It really and truly felt as if I was the same person, just twenty years older. Maybe that ol’ boy grew up better than I gave him credit for, I don’t know, but it was truly fantastic to be back among the tribe. I was incredibly nervous heading in, and that disappeared within about three minutes, and after that it was off to the races. Just a blast all around. (And a surprisingly reasonable bar tab. When you can drink your way out of your reunion for under $50, you done good.)
Just once, I’d like to go back to the ancestral lands on the down-low, not let on to any of my local trying relations that I was there, maybe have Team Black Swan East come up and join us, and have our fellow Trees show us what’s good in the 205. I mean, there’s stuff there I would never have though to even look for. Soho Square? I didn’t even know that existed until drinks at the Aloft last Christmas. Bottletree? What’s a bottle tree? There may actually be cool stuff there, and it would be a blast to actually get to check it out. Put that on the “maybe” list once of these days – if we can ever circumvent the flight issue…