Broken News: High School Reunion Completely Disappoints

MADISON, WI -- Last Friday night, 193 West Haven High School graduates from the class of 1999 convened at Finkle's Bar & Grill, a mere stone's throw from their alma mater, filled with hope for long-simmering drunken confrontations, unwise sexual congress, and transparent exaggerations of lives that would best be described as abject failures.

Instead, the West Haven alumni managed to stage perhaps the least-interesting reunion on record in the western hemisphere. Apart from a single vomit-filled ficus outside of the women's bathroom and a pair of D.U.I.'s, the event ran its course with a sadly remarkable lack of horrible behavior.

"Fuck me!" said Gregory Zemelman, former Math Club president who is now a civil engineer living in Chicago. "I'd been waiting years. Years! I got through grad school on the promise of heaping derision on some morbidly obese ex-cheerleader types who laughed at me for almost half a decade. All they did was plump up a little after they had kids. Not a single meth addiction amongst the entire goddamn squad."

"One of those cheerleaders even apologized for being mean to me 'Way back then'! What the fuck?"

Much of the disappointment with the reunion seemed to come from those who might have been considered less-than-popular in their high school years, but wound up finding no small measure of success later on in life.

"I'd have to say my biggest let-down was seeing Tyler," explained Lauren Adams, a criminal defense attorney in Manhattan, in reference to former all-city quarterback and student council president, Tyler Murphy.

"Seriously, my face cleared up, I dropped seven dress sizes, and I make more money than any five of those mouth breathers combined. During that time, not only did Tyler refuse to drink himself into oblivion or go to jail, the bastard went off and started a reasonably successful landscaping company. I hope one of his kids gets caught in a fucking wood chipper."

When asked to comment on Ms. Adams' statement, Mr. Murphy replied, "Who? Oh, her... yeah, I hope she's doing well and stuff."

For some, the realization that a decade mentally fueled by petty high school sleights resulted in little more than terminally misplaced anger was too much to bear.

"Ten goddamn years of that 'I'll show them I'm not a clarinet playing dweeb' and 'What'll those bitches and assholes think now that I'm doing all this big, important shit', and for what?" West Haven graduate Josh Harriot said, throwing his hands in the air.

"Not only do I find out these people have mostly changed for the better and that we've all grown up emotionally, but I realized that all the shit I was doing to 'show everybody' isn't all that important, or even good, and that no one really cares. Unfuckingbelievable!"

"The middle! We're all average people standing in the fucking middle!" Harriot yelled out. "I'm not lording over shit!"

In fact, 'People growing up and changing for the better' was cited as the number one reason for disappointment, beating out 'No porn stars in the class' and the fact that everyone was generally pleasant to be around. Still, some had other complaints.

"Nah, I'm gonna have to go with 'Hot girls not as hot as you remember them' as my biggest complaint," observed Ethan Wallace, a former member of the track team and current marketing analyst.

"The way I remember it, Chelsea Garrett was, like, the hottest woman in the world. Supermodel level, easy. Now I look at her and she looks pretty much the same, but she only seems nominally attractive. It feels like someone is messing with my mind."

In the end, after the crushing realization that they were all average people with average jobs who had gone through a typical, average high school experience and typical, average reunion, some placed their hopes in the future.

"The 20 year reunion, man, that's where the shit will go down," hoped Harriot. "By then we should have separated out a little more career and wage-wise, our children will have had time to grow into unmentionable fuckups or stunning successes, there will probably be a few divorces and bad plastic surgeries, and we'll really be able to do some nose-to-shit rubbing."

He paused and sighed a bit, "At least I hope so. I can't deal with another one of these mildly pleasant evenings."