Letters of my 20 year Reunion

Dear Heavyset man sitting next to me on the red-eye,
Did you notice that all the lights on the plane were out? ALL of them? Except yours? And when I put the blanket of a thousand germs over my head to block out the glare of your "reading" light which was burning holes in my cornea, did you consider turning it off?
WHY NOT, asshole?

Just trying to get some sleep,
32D


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Dear Delta,
I know that someone has to sit in the back row of every flight. Someone has to sit in the seat that doesn't recline, has to smell lovely aroma of the latrine for 5 hours. But did it have to be me on both flights?

Seriously. What up, Delta?

Unhappily,
32D and 33C


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Dear Amy,
You are too old to take the red-eye.

Sincerely,
Hindsight

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Dear Men of Connecticut,
Blue blazers. Why? You know those yearbooks that were lying around, the ones from 1948 and thereabouts? Did it seem strange to you that the students in those yearbooks were wearing exactly the same clothes as you are today? Maybe you should consider something slightly different, so you don't match every other alumni in the reunion tent. Maybe a black blazer. Or, if that's too crazy, maybe a blue blazer without gold buttons.

Oh, but mixing it up by wearing pink pants instead of khakis? So very very wrong.

Sincerely,
Every other state in America

P.S. Bermuda shorts with a blue blazer and a tie? Shudder.


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Dear Universe,
I know you have it out for me lately. I get it. It's okay, you've been good to me before, I realize I have to take the bad stuff too. But making every single conversation with my former classmates go from "do you have kids?" to "I have three kids" to "do you think you'll ever try for a third?" to "isn't it fun to have three" to "I always wanted three, how can you be sure you are done at two?" etc etc ET CETERA THREE KIDS THREE KIDS THREE KIDS was a little bit harsh, don't you think?

And then having me get my period unexpectedly Saturday afternoon? Uncalled for, truly.

You got me, okay? Uncle.

Pissed off,
The one you keep fucking with


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Dear Brain,
What happened to you? Yeah, yeah, red-eye, twenty years, whatever. How can you not remember so much of what went on in high school? Everyone else there seemed to have a better grasp. Nodding and smiling and pretending to remember didn't fool anyone. Should we be checked for early Alzheimer's?

Worried,
Amy


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Dear Former Classmate who was my best friend at one time,
Wow. I get that you're nervous. But I googled you, I know how successful you are. And you look hot. So the obscene jokes and crazy behavior just to get a laugh seemed really over the top. I mean, at first it was funny--you were always funny. But when it became clear that that was all you were going to do, when it just escalated and escalated as the night wore on, damn. It got really old.

What happened to you?
Puzzled,
'Tommy'


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Dear Class of 1988,
I was nervous to see you all. I was. I figured that I would feel lame, that you would all strut in with your fancy jobs and your perfect lives and that I would feel inferior. I thought I would stutter over the "what do you do?" question, that I would feel fat and ugly or worse, invisible.
But it wasn't like that for me, and I hope it wasn't like that for any of you. Yeah, a lot of you have fancy jobs. And a lot of you---most of you, really--look great, look better than high school, even. But none of that seemed to matter and I am so grateful for that.

Maybe I'll even come back again before another twenty years go by.

See you in 2018?,
Amy


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Dear tiny prep school full of wealthy teenagers where I spent my formative years,
I don't know what to say. For a lot of time I've hated you. What a cesspool of entitlement and snobbery and cluelessness, not to mention the preponderance of blue blazers. But you were pretty this weekend. You showed off all your new buildings, you preened under the cloudless blue sky and easy 70 degree temperature. The green fields, the lacrosse sticks and mouthguards, flying cleats and cheering parents--it all seemed promising instead of elitist somehow.
And yeah, there was a lot of pomp and arrogance too. Many of your students, former and present, do not live in a reality that would be recognizable to 95% of the rest of the world, and they maybe never will. They mostly don't have any desire to. A lot of them are assholes, are small-minded, are selfish and ridiculously out of touch. But not all of them. Some of them are even interesting. Some have broken free of that world. Some of them haven't, and yet are still kind and compassionate and funny.
We had some good times, back then, and I remembered why this weekend. Turns out, you're not all bad.

Cordially,
Me


Though I do have to repost this delicious parody, just so I remember to keep it real: