I went to my 10-year reunion and everyone was fat

This weekend was my ten-year high school reunion and a friend talked me into going to it, against my better judgment. I have lived on the east coast for almost ten years and Jesse and I just moved back to the Seattle area last October. I haven't seen any of the people I went to school with since the day we graduated. I am only Facebook friends with a handful of them, and haven't really tracked the life developments of anyone other than the few I actually pay attention to online. So, I attended this reunion pretty much blind and without any expectations whatsoever.

What caught me off guard first was that I didn't recognize anyone or remember anyone's names. And I mean anyone. It was as if I had never met any of these people before in my life, even though I went to school with them for at least four years straight ... many of them for even longer than that. But even first names were well beyond my grasp. It was as if I had suffered a serious brain injury that prevented me from remembering even the most basic information about the people I spent such a vast swath of my life with. One of the event organizers was utterly unfamiliar to me in both face and name ... but in order to be one of the event organizers, she would have had to be deeply involved in student government in high school. So this girl probably ran for Senior Class President and won. Maybe I even voted for her. But I don't remember anything about her -- it was as if I had never seen her before in my entire life. Did she even go to our school? Can anyone confirm this? Was she an impostor????

I don't remember who the Prom Queen was so I have no idea if her story checks out.

As the evening wore on and the friend who dragged me there filled me in on some of the juicier secrets of people's lives, vague memories started to slowly filter back into my brain. I started to remember these people just the slightest little bit.

And then they played the old senior slide show of pictures of everyone back in the day, and a few more memories trickled in. At that point, I realized something shocking and turned to my friend to share my insight with her: the average per-capita weight gain of the entire Skyline High School Class of 2003 was at least ten pounds, maybe more. Fifteen pounds. Hell, I'd believe it was twenty pounds if someone wanted to run some numbers on the back of an envelope!

But the weight gain was not even. Everyone seemed to gain weight differently, while others didn't gain weight at all (or even lost it) -- naturally, others stepped up to make up for the weight that their former classmates lost. Here are the most common locations that I saw these newly-gained pounds distributed:

1

The face

Is there anything more unfortunate than gaining a bunch of weight in your face? I mean, there's nothing you can do to hide it. No amount of baggy clothing is going to camouflage your big ol' fat face. Some people think growing a beard will help, but it doesn't. Now you just look like a fat-faced round guy with a beard.

And yes, there were a LOT of people whose faces doubled in size in the past ten years. I don't really have any advice for these people beyond maybe eating a diet of mostly extremely chewy foods. Do your facercises, people.

2

The stomach

I would fall into this category. There was only one other visibly pregnant person there, though. What a bummer. I was hoping for an army of preggos!

Either way, this one isn't that interesting. I'm the exact same size I was in high school in every way except my ginormous belly. I can even fit into many of the clothes I wore back then, or I could if they stretched enough. I wore a tight-fitting black dress to really ramp up the surprise for people who saw me from behind and were like "Oh, I see that Jamie hasn't changed a bit" and then I turned sideways and they were like "OH MY GOD SOMEBODY MADE HER PREGNANT THIS IS TERRIFYING."

3

All over

Haha, y'all bunch of fatasses.

4

The bra

This was also a pretty popular place to gain weight. Allow me to tread carefully.

I don't really object to women who want to get breast implants to make themselves feel more confident and beautiful. It's not something that I would ever do, because as a runner this would be akin to hobbling myself, but hey, it's your body; do what you want.

However.

I can't really stomach the thought of women getting breast implants at the age of 18-20. Because first of all, at that age you haven't even really given your natural boobs a chance out in the world. You think high school guys are the best judges of boob-worthiness? Goodness no. Go to college and wear a few low-cut tops. Graduate from college and debut your boobs in the adult world. Boob it up around the grown-ups for a few years and see how you feel. If, at that point, you STILL aren't happy with what God gave you, then do what you need to do. But getting a boob job straight out of high school is just silly.

And secondly, if you're planning to have kids, then it REALLY doesn't seem to make sense to get a boob job young. You're just going to have to get another one after you're done having kids, because your first boob job is going to look like someone stuffed an orange into a tube sock.

Did a lot of women from my high school put on some weight in their boobs? Yes. Did a lot of them do it right away after they graduated? Yes. Is it obvious now to anyone, even those who didn't know them in high school? Yes. Jesse was expert at picking out the boob jobs in the room despite never having seen these people before.

Also, one girl had a bunch of plastic surgery done on her face too. She was really pretty back then. Now she's all pointy like a bird. I didn't even have to point her out to Jesse -- he looked at her and immediately knew she'd had work done, never having seen her before in his life.

Vain women, sometimes you are stupid.


In addition to all the chubbies, I was shocked shocked SHOCKED by one of the people who turned out to be gay. That's the other best part of going to your reunion, by the way -- the people who weren't "out" in high school are now, so you can check and see if your predictions were correct. And let me tell you how shocked I was by this one guy. SHOCKED. Mostly I was shocked by how fat he had gotten and how stereotypically gay his mannerisms had become. This guy played sports and was a dick and was friends with all the jocks in high school. Now he wears tight jeans rolled up over loafers with no socks, constantly touching people on the arm and talking with a slight lisp. I just ... wow.

And there are people who are already going bald. 28 years old. Those poor saps.



And then Jesse almost got into a brawl with a bunch of guys who were blocking the way into the bathroom and wouldn't move when he said "excuse me." It was like they took pleasure in blocking the way into the bathroom. Because they're still in high school ... ? Yeah, that almost ended badly. I'm not going to say something like "it would have made my year to see my husband mop the floor with these fat balding attempted tyrants," but I'm not going to say it wouldn't have made my year either. Because maybe I'm still in high school a little bit too.

All in all, I'm glad I went. Everyone was so fat. Man oh man.