SATURDAY, cont.

Guy:  What class are you?

Becky:  2004!

Guy:  What?!  I thought you were a current student!

Becky:  Naw, man.  This is our five-year reunion!

Guy:  So what are you doing now?

And this is the portion of the evening in which I horrified everyone within listening distance.  Those amongst the Class of ’04 who were there to hear me would bring it up repeatedly for the duration of the weekend (and beyond!) and tell me how awful I was to say it.  The current students physically recoiled in horror as soon as the words left my mouth. 

And what was it that I said that was so bad?

I answered the question honestly.

Becky:  Jack shit!  I am doing JACK SHIT!!

HAHA.  No one even knew what to do about me saying that.  The guy who asked me the questions looked like I’d just told him there was no Santa Claus.

And then I just dug the knife in a little deeper.

Becky:  Your Rhodes education means nothing! 

By this point, Kathryn and Megan were walking as quickly as possible in the opposite direction and loudly encouraging me to follow them. 

Megan:  Becky, get away from the students!

Kara (to the students):  Don’t listen to her.  You just need to go to grad school!

Becky:  Don’t go to grad school!  You’ll just go into debt!

Oh, but saying that made me feel guilty because all of my friends are either currently in or have recently graduated from grad school.  So I amended:

Becky:  No, it really isn’t that bad!  I’m sorry!  You’ll get to come back here after you graduate!  Getting drunk in the amphitheater and riding the lynx.  That’s what’s waiting for you in five years!!!

(Sometimes the truth hurts.)

So there went Becky again, making everyone super-uncomfortable!!  You might think I would blame it on the alcohol, but that would be a gross simplification of my abilities to stir up trouble with incendiary blanket statements about controversial issues (it’s my specialty).  I was stone cold sober at brunch when I shouted, “Mark Zuckerburg is the Bill Gates of social networking!” and maybe that wasn’t too terrible, but it was a different story when I was out to dinner with a bunch of conservative friends before the 2004 election and yelled, “It makes me PHYSICALLY ILL to think about what George W. Bush has done to this country!”  Or hey, what about that time I drove several long-time Jake Watch readers away from the blog - permanently - because I slammed Jake for dropping out of college?  The counter-argument there was that it didn’t matter that he quit because he was making more money than an ordinary college graduate anyway.

 “The value of an education cannot be measured in occupational success!” is what I wrote at the time.  And I still hold that true!  ABSOLUTELY I believe in the value of a college education…

…I just can’t believe how unbelievably academically snobby we all were while we were students. 

I love Rhodes College.  But I hate that I didn’t understand while I was a student that the hard work I was putting in would not directly translate into any real world advantages over those with degrees from less “prestigious” institutions.  That’s what I was trying to say.  But I fear some of that nuance was left behind with the Bloody Marys.

Eh, those students will find out about the real world soon enough, although I have to wonder about the level of power my friends think I wield.  Good Lord, if I hear one more time about how terrible I was to “discourage” them…um, for real, if they’re going to stop working because of one (admittedly drunken) shout across the quad from a complete stranger then perhaps those students shouldn’t be at Rhodes anyway!

Anyway. 

On to Silkys!

Megan dropped us off near Beale Street.  It was late enough that we had to stand in line to be carded and metal detected.  Did you know that in Tennessee it’s legal to bring guns into bars?  This is a brand new law which Tennessee lawmakers just passed because they thought was such a great idea.  (Tennessee is INSANE.)  There’s a provision, though, by which individual establishments can opt out and the entire street of Beale collectively decided what common sense has dictated since the invention of gunpowder:  alcohol and firearms are a bad mix.  So no guns on Beale. 

After it was determined that none of us were packing, we headed into Silky O’Sullivan’s, the world famous bar where live goats will drink your beer if you want them to!  (Much like guns in bars this totally legal in the state of Tennessee.)  When Crystal and I were in Ireland, we met a man who knew Silky and even knew where the world famous goats came from (somewhere in Ireland; honestly I don’t remember much of anything about what he told us now that four years have passed). 

We sat away from the goats and people-watched and talked to some classmates who wandered by.  We were just getting ready to leave when we were approached by some younger alumni, one of whom was wearing a bow-tie.

When Kara and I ate lunch at the Rat on Friday, we saw a couple of male students wearing bow-ties and commented on how Rhodes-y that was.  This is the type of school I went to.  Where guys in their early twenties voluntarily wear bow-ties.  Because they think it looks good.  And you thought I was just kidding about that academic snobbery thing!  Now perhaps you see why I have no regrets about shouting some real-world-truth to the students by the lynx.  These are basically people who want to grow up to be George Will or Tucker Carlson (who are both appalling individuals and should never be emulated).

Bow-Tie Boy beelined to me, apparently mistaking my instinctual revulsion towards his attire for casual sexual interest.  He was so drunk…MY GOD he was drunk!  He was at that level of drunk where he couldn’t quite make eye contact anymore because his pupils were so blown.  And yet he held onto the conversation better than I hold onto most conversations sober.  A friend of his sat down next to Crystal and Kathryn.  The friend was much less drunk and opened the conversation by insinuating he and his friend would like for two of us (any two?) to go to a hotel with them to cap off the evening.  So classy, those boys!

So I told them both that we were INCREDIBLY OLD.  Class of TWO-THOUSAND AND FOUR OLD. 

Bow-Tie Boy rolled his eyes.  “You’re ‘so old.’  Why are you saying you’re ‘so old’?”  And then he made some comment about us being “cougars” (what the !@?*#&$) and then I swear he said he was the Class of 2007, but later, when Kara and I compared notes (for by this time two other guys had joined our table and were occupying Kara’s attention), she said they were Class of ’08 or ’09.  The guy talking to Crystal and Kathryn said that he and his friends were “bobcats” because they were hitting on “older women.”

Bobcats!  HA!  That’s the best thing I heard all night.

Bow-Tied Boy turned back to me:  “I so would have gone for you when you were a senior and I was a freshman,” he said.  “God that would have been hot.” 

I think that’s debatable.

He then dragged me off to go dance and when we got to the dance floor, he just sort of stared at me as I moved and said, “You are SO AWKWARD.  I LOVE IT.”  That annoyed me so I stopped, pulled him close, and spoke into his ear, “I’m not drunk enough to be doing this.” 

And even through the haze of alcohol, he understood that I meant him and not the dancing.  He graciously led me away from the band and I found Kara and Kathryn waiting for me with my purse.  We swung back by our table to pick up Crystal.  The guy she was talking to looked genuinely surprised that Crystal was leaving him.  “You just used me for my conversation!” he said.  Rhodes boys.  They always stick to what they know.  (Which is Rhodes girls.)  You can tell they were younger than us because no one who was in school while we were there would have EVER thought that any of us would go home with them.  We were good girls (i.e. nerds).  We still are.

And that story right there probably tells you everything you need to know about why no one dated me in college.

Our final stop was Raiford’s, where we wound up after some of our fellow classmates told us that’s where the night was unofficially ending.  Raiford’s is pretty famous though I’d never been before.  The only thing I knew about the place was that anyone who dared enter would not regain full hearing for at least two days.  It wound up being a bit of a disco bar with lots of smoke and ABBA and Michael Jackson.  I got pulled onto the dance floor by some guy who told me:  “I love the way you move, girl!” 

Man, people were just all over the MAP judging my dancing skills that night. 

I left him after the one song, though, and went back to my group where we merged with another group of Rhodes girls, amongst which was a guy, whom all of us assumed someone else in the group knew…but no!  He was just a random stranger!  He looked very Rhodes-y, with glasses and a button-down shirt, and was a perfect gentlemen.  I’m not really sure what was up with him but we had lots of fun mouthing (over the deafening bass) that it was hilarious how none of us knew who he was.  He took a special liking to Kathryn but alas, romance was not in the air for any of us this weekend…

We left Raiford’s a little after 3:00 (I can’t even remember the last time I left a club at 3:00 am) and we hailed a cab to take us back to my place.  The driver did his best to entertain us by telling stories about the drunken people he’s driven around the city of Memphis, but we were all boring and exhausted.  As he dropped us off at he said, “I’m not going to have any stories to tell about you!”  I apologized. 

And I went to bed with my ears ringing.

SUNDAY: 

We were late getting up on Sunday.  We were supposed to be at Café Eclectic by 11:30 for Meg’s surprise baby shower.  But Meg left me a message around 10:45 and it became clear that we had forgotten the important detail of telling Meg when we were going to be meeting her (oops).  We pushed the time back to 11:45.

The baby shower was nice.  Low-key.  Megan and Jonathan got some great stuff.   

And wow.  They're really having a baby!  Everyone's life is so different now...

I thought I would be taking Kathryn to the airport, but Kathryn hadn’t gotten a chance to talk much with Marissa, so she went off with her…and Crystal went off to spend her last night in Memphis with Amber…and Kara got into her car and headed home…  Megan and Jonathan left and I drove back to my place to do laundry and clean up…

And that was it.

Five years.  FIVE YEARS!  When we all got together on Friday night, it was like no time had passed.  We stepped back onto campus and it felt like we’d all just been there the day before…

But as the weekend went on, I started to feel the years we’d been apart, and the little (and sometimes big) ways in which we’ve all grown.  I’ve lived lifetimes in the past five years.  Where we once all shared the major commonality that the school we lived and worked in was the biggest part of our lives, now we all have different priorities.  Kara, Kathryn, and Crystal have school.  Amber, Marissa, and Josie have relationships.  Megan has both (well, past tense with school).  I have neither.  Those times when we weren't reminiscing, it was impossible to overlook the ways in which we're all different now.

But in spite of that, goddamn we still have a lot of fun together!

Five years.  And look at us!  We’re only just now really starting our lives!  None of us have quite gotten where we’re going yet.  I can't even imagine where we'll be five years from now...

Thank you to everyone who came in for the weekend!!  I already can't wait to see what the 10-year reunion brings. :)

THE END.