It occurred to me a few days ago that this is the year of my ten-year high school reunion. I have a few friends on Facebook that attended high school with me, so I figured I was connected enough to be notified when the reunion event was going to be. I wasn't even sure I wanted to go, but it was an option.

I was kind of an awkward kid in high school (but really, who wasn't?). I had a few friends and some people knew my name - either because we'd gone to the same schools since elementary or because they knew my brother (who is 2.5 years older than me). I didn't join any clubs or participate in any sports (Ok, I did the PowderPuff thing Senior year. But that hardly counts. I played for like 5 seconds in the game.). I tried to be as invisible as possible. Then, after graduation, I disappeared to my small college in Tahoe where I could "reinvent" myself.

About a year ago, I started getting friend requests on Facebook from people whose faces were in my high school yearbooks. Some of them I recognized right away, like the totally cute boy who had a ska band in HS, or the cheerleader who appeared to still be impossibly skinny. Others, I had to look up in the yearbook and still didn't really know. But there were dozens of them. It started one day, and soon I was Facebook friends with almost my entire graduating class (at least it felt that way). I was obsessed with reading through their profiles to find out who got married, who had babies, who graduated from what college & what was their major. I even calculated baby-ages to see who had babies fresh out of high school.

This went on for a few months. I would get the requests, accept them, and then try to memorize what these people had been doing since graduation. And I was judging all of them. I was judging them based on the smiles in their photos. I figured every single one of them was deliriously happy and had led much more interesting and fulfilling lives than I had (by what scale, I have no idea). I kind of sunk into a mini-depression over it.

And then one day I snapped. I was sick of seeing their smiling faces on Facebook, while I felt my life was falling apart at the seams (this was in the middle of the divorce). I hated reading status updates that read as if they were the most interesting and fabulous people in the entire world. So I deleted them. Ninety-five percent of them. I even deleted two girls who I had actually been friends with throughout high school (one of them since the age of 3!) and still met up with every once in a while when I made the random trek West to visit my parents.

I purged, and immediately felt relief. I still felt crappy about my life, but at least now I wasn't comparing every aspect to lives as seen through Facebook. I had to remind myself on a daily basis that Facebook does not represent anybody's real life. Ever.

Now 2011 has come around and I think about my ten-year reunion. And even though I kind of have an idea of what people have been up to, I'm still curious to see what the difference is between those people who found me on Facebook, and the who these people actually are.

So I went to my high school's website and started clicking through all the Alumni stuff until I finally found it. The reunion page.

Now, I only graduated ten years ago. My only experience with high school reunions is based entirely off of movies (namely, Romy & Michele's High School Reunion...obviously). But it seems that, with my high school, they hold a reunion every year and it is pretty much a gathering comprised of all the 10-, 20-, 30, etc. reunion attendees. Does that make sense? Is that how it normally is? Is this really a giant party of a bunch of 28, 38, 48, 58, 68... year olds? Alright. Accepted.

Then I scrolled down the page to find the date of the reunion for 2011. It is to be held on March 6th, 2011.

In FOUR WEEKS.

I went into panic-mode. Four weeks is not enough time for me to not only make the decision on whether or not I want to go, but also for me to lose 30 20 pounds and find a handsome date so people won't think I'm totally and completely alone just like I was in high school because I never dated in high school and so oh my god look at that freak....

Deep breath.

It's also a cost of $95, plus the cost of driving my ass over to the Bay Area. Plus, I'm not going to know anybody there. I mean really know. I'm not still friends with anybody from my high school (in real life. Facebook, I think there's like three.) and I am so completely awkward in social settings. Completely.

I still can't decide whether to go. One of my high school Facebook friends said she'll go if I go. And she'll even memorize the recipe for glue so we can reenact the scene from Romy & Michele. But I made her promise we could leave via helicopter. I think she may have been crossing her fingers.

If you're old enough, did you go to your ten-year high school reunion? What was it like? If you aren't quite old enough, are you going to go?

UPDATE: Yeah, I'm writing an update as I'm writing the original post because some news has come (via Facebook) just this moment. Apparently the reunion in March is for all grads. The class of 2001 is having their own ten-year reunion in October. Plenty of time to hem & haw and eventually not go go not go go.