There are more than 500 bars in Kenosha, Wis., and I'm trying to figure out how about 125 people from my graduating class decided to be at two of them last Wednesday night, and why I feel weird about it in the first place.
The first step in solving the mystery of the appearing classmates is to examine the geo-cultural tendencies that my former classmates and I must share through the ingrained common sights, smells and experiences of our shared formative years. In Kenosha our shared experience can be boiled down to two words: driving drunk. Everyone seemed to be out Wednesday night, and I didn't see too many people drinking water or soda (although we did have a driver doing just that).
So, it's not really a mystery as to why everyone was out on Thanksgiving Eve--they were getting drunk. Why were they all at two bars, though?
The Sunnyside held a sweaty and crowded mix of people my age and the middle-aged. Usually a middle-aged bar, it has a certain reputation as being a drinker's bar. There's a story about a man known as Fast Jack, who would tell his wife he was going to the hardware store and instead go to the Sunnyside. He would light a cigarette as he walked in the door. The bartender would pour two shots of brandy and a chaser beer, which he would put down in the time it took to finish the cigarette. Then he would go home without any tools.
This is the first year that everyone in my graduating class was legal to drink on Thanksgiving. I think part of the attraction of the Sunnyside was the inclusion with the middle-agers. We're old enough to drink now and determined to participate in the ritual of developing a Turkey Day hangover. It was fun to see, but very difficult to actually do anything because it was too crowded. The influx of youngsters was more than the space could handle and we took off.
After a short stop at a smaller neighborhood bar, my friends and I dared to go where we knew there would be people from high school, Mr. Z's Lounge. It's probably the premier music venue in Kenosha, which is pretty crappy. Some people from my class were playing, and I wanted to see it.
Sure enough, everyone I expected was there, and by the time we left toward the end of the set I had made short conversation with a few people and managed to tell a couple of the cuter and nicer girls that they were honored by my remembering their names because I had forgotten a whole lot of other ones. That last part didn't go over so well.
So when you go home and see people who you have to make small talk with, do you get nervous? Do you fall back into high school roles? Do you mess around and make up stories? Do you avoid them?
I seem to fall back into high school behavior, which involves a lot of drinking and aloofness.
The difference in relationships in high school and college is that in college you can just leave where you are and avoid those people. Reputations don't matter as much anymore. So when you head back to where your reputation matters more than what you've been doing, it might bother you. I wasn't that bothered by it, but I think I might have been even more aloof than I used to be. It gives the impression that I hate a lot of people, when really I'm just unsure of where I fit in, or if I want to bother to do that at all.
And then there are the people who are planning marriage, cripes.
