In June -- I think it was June -- we found ourselves one Saturday at a funeral for one of our old high school friends. At that time, we and two other couples pledged to get together again. Yesterday, one of those couples hosted a barbecue at their home for all of us. It was quite an event.There were ten people altogether, four couples, one woman whose husband was picking up their kids from camp, and one man who is divorced. I had never met him before, although all the guys knew him: there are/were two junior high schools in town that feed into the high school, and this guy had gone to the other one with nearly everyone else, but then had been sent off to boarding school for high school. So the others had grown up with him, but a few of us really didn't know him at all.
What can I say? It was a great afternoon. (And evening.) It's very interesting to spend time with people who you know very, very well, but on the other hand, don't really know at all. There was never an awkard moment or hesitation; it was as if we were all just 14 again, but in the good way, in the way that we hang out together all the time and just know each other.
As I said back in June, the Hubs was in this group of six boys who were inseparable. (How the wives fit in is interesting; I'll get to that.) Of the six, one is the recently departed, and one is something of a recluse, although he was invited to come yesterday. We understand that he is just recently married for the first time. (We are all 53 years old.) Sorry, everyone pretty much still thinks he's gay, although he may just be peculiar. One of the four couples didn't make it to the funeral, so we haven't seen them in twenty years or more. Okay, got it?
That one, the one we just saw for the first time, looks just like Milhouse's father on the Simpsons, except with a mustache. It was pretty weird. He's the only bald one in the group, and it looks somehow totally natural and very odd on him. His wife did not go to school with us; he met her some years after that. She was also lovely. He is, btw, and OB/GYN.
The couple who hosted it. Okay. She was one of my best friends in junior high; I don't think she knew her husband in high school except to say hello. But she had a best guy-friend since she was little, and his roommate in college was this other guy because they were both in the Gang of Six ... and this best-guy friend came to college with a girlfriend from home, who hadn't been any of our friends in school, but she and this other girl got to be friends because they were in the same college and their boyfriends were roommates in the same college .... it's clear, right?
So this guy is a gastroenterologist. (The host.) Listen. I am comfortably ensconced in the middle class. I live in the community I grew up in, in a mouse-sized cape cod, we drive junker cars, but we sent our kids to college. These people .... they are freaking loaded. Seriously, I could fit my house into theirs three or four times. I have no idea how many rooms it has, but it was just huge. They had a TV that would not even fit into a single room in my house. All of them were driving BMWs and Lexi and shit. It was pretty amazing. And every single one of them, the doctors, the Wall Street lawyer, were all the same down-to-earth, really nice people that they always were. Nobody was dressed fancy or dripping in jewels. (Although all the women were wearing lovely, but tastefully understated, diamond rings.)
The accumulated wealth there was a bit of a suprise, but the afternoon couldn't have been more delightful. We talked nostalgia a lot, but we also talked kids -- there were three 19 year old sons in the group, and any number of kids looking at colleges, although one couple still has a seven year old -- yipes!) We laughed a lot, and the Hubs even tossed a football around on the lawn with his old cronies.
The Turnpike traffic was dreadful coming and going, something of a surprise, but the Hubs was cool with it and not all angry. I think he really, really had a great day. I'm glad. He's not so much a social outlet kind of guy, although he used to be. Maybe this is shaking him up a bit.
Anyway, that was my day yesterday. I'm still playing with the new cell phone and trying to figure out all the features. When we got in the car to come home last night, I took it out to call K and it was dark and I couldn't figure out how to do anything with it. I felt very Duh.
