My 25-Damn-Year-Class-Reunion. Must Be Mistake - I'm Only 29

(Photo by Dan Drotleff, Post by Dawn Weber, copyright 2011)

Well, Google thinks I'm old. So it must be true.

Yes, it's a well-known fact that Google collects ages and other user demographics. And now every web page I visit with "Google Ads" has great news for me:

"How to Build Muscle When You're Older!"
"Lose Middle-Age Belly Fat the Easy Way!"
"In your 50s? Try this one weird trick to fall asleep at night!"

My 50s?! WTF?

Google is an asshole.

As if the all-knowing search engines weren't enough to make me feel ancient, I am helping to plan my 25-damn-year class reunion.

Wait, what?

You heard that right. Let me say it again so that maybe I'll start to believe it:

Twenty-Five-Damn-Year-Class-Reunion. Yes, that's its official name - according to me.

Time is also an asshole.

I am not sure where the years went. I am not sure how this happened, where I was, what I was doing.

Wait. I take that back. I know where I was - at work.

Yes, it's been a fast 25 years, a fulfilling life, full of riveting activities and achievements. Such as sitting in cubicles! Driving amongst dummies in traffic! Loading dishwashers and changing several hundred thousand diapers!

And soon enough, somebody will be changing my diapers.

Happy Thoughts: You're still at the wrong blog.

But this Twenty-Five-Damn-Year-Reunion got me thinking about things. Pondering Deep, Meaningful Bullshit about life, aging and the way things used to be, long time ago when we was fab.

My school, the old Springfield Local High School, was built in the 1920s. A crumbling building even when I was there in the 80s, full of dust and asbestos, it sits on State Route 170 near cornfields and the Petersburg, Ohio post office. We called it "The Shoe Factory." Because it looks like a shoe factory.

Here are my Top Ten Ways to Know You're From Old School Springfield Local, a.k.a. The Shoe Factory:

10. You knew that the first day of deer season? All boys (and several girls) would be absent.
9. The school parking lot contained four pickup trucks for every one car.
8. To this day, you know when corn in any given field is ready for the John Deere combine.
7. You can clearly remember the "Asbestos Removal" men in the building. Working in head-to-toe Haz-Mat suits. As you ambled past in jeans and a t-shirt.
6. You don't understand how any school year can start before the Canfield Fair ends. Obviously, 4-H is more important. Obviously.
5. You purchased your first piece-of-shit vehicle - at least in part - yourself. And again, odds are 4 to 1 it had a tailgate. (See number 9).
4. Proper locations for parties include fields, abandoned strip mines (!) and backyards of unsuspecting, vacationing parents.
3. You could tell that first lunch break had begun by the smell wafting up from the questionable, archaic maybe non-existent septic tank.
2. You know that spray paint is not for huffing. No. It's for painting your name on road signs and turnpike underpasses.

And the number one way to Know You're From Old School Springfield Local, a.k.a. The Shoe Factory?

1. A six-pack and a bonfire were - and still are - all you need for a good time.

Thank you Dawn David Letterman.

Blah. Enough reminiscing. I blinked, and it's 25 years later. Google says I'm old, I've got a 25-Damn-Year-Class-Reunion to help plan and a cubicle in which to sit.

The former Springfield Local High School - a.k.a. The Shoe Factory - still stands. Barely. Whoever owns it now, I hear, has filled it with vehicles and junk.

They built the "new," current Springfield Local High School (our old middle school) - I think - in the 70s. Fancy! I hear the kids who go to that carcinogen-free building now have air conditioning, a functioning septic system and safe drinking water.

Pansies.

Asbestos that doesn't kill you? Only makes you stronger.