My classmates are grizzled old coots

By Jason Johnson

The Class of ’89 just held our twenty–year reunion. According to the pictures on Facebook, it was attended solely by old coots.

I did not attend, as I was busy doing typical young person things — being cool, looking sharp, and learning to eat with a spoon.

Besides, in high school, I was as popular as a case of herpes. Less popular, in fact. At least girls knew herpes existed.

Girls didn’t respond to my dating attempts, apparently unswayed by my impressive collection of comic books and festering, golf–ball–sized zits.

Similarly, boys were unimpressed with my girlish wailing after they smashed my face open like a microwaved bag of pus.

So I was not exactly eager to meet up with this crowd again, considering my dreams have crashed like a Windows program and my career has all the sex appeal of Rush Limbaugh’s unwashed thong.

But now I’m sorry I didn’t go because I could have had all those balding, overweight mummies entertain me with Civil War anecdotes. And I could laugh at them all, knowing I was the only one still using his first set of dentures.

I’ve got pictures to prove that I don’t look all that different from my high school self. Sure, I’ve got man–boobs now, but they’re young, pert man–boobs. I’ve got a few wrinkles, but none big enough to fit a Mars explorer.

I don’t dress any more fashionably, but I don’t have to shop for shirts in the maternity section. My job isn’t cool, but I don’t have a large, unaccounted–for gap on my resume hiding the prison time I spent for tax evasion, mail fraud, or sexually assaulting St. Mary’s exercise balls.

This is quite a change from my ten–year reunion. I didn’t attend that one either, but I’d seen enough of my peers to know they didn’t look much different and had spouses who were still attractive. Whereas I was still living in my parents’ basement, with my invisible friend and chronic virginity.

It turns out, though, hiding in my folks’ basement saved me from having Life use my face as a football and turn me into that walking cluster of age splotches I used to call my classmates.

(It’s worth adding here that I wasn’t even invited to my ten–year reunion. One of the organizers said she "couldn’t find" me, even though I was still living at home and she was the daughter of my mom’s best friend. Hard to believe they wouldn’t want me there, in light of my preternatural ability to point out their faults.)

I felt a particular wave of schadenfreude when I saw the photo of a girl who used to be among the hottest in my class. She was quite popular, which means that, in high school, she looked at me the way Nancy Pelosi looked at Joe Wilson just before she chewed off his head and regurgitated it for her younglings.

But she now has as much chance of getting laid as I do, which amuses me to no end. She went from Cindy Crawford to William Howard Taft.

Sure, there are guys out there who are chubby chasers, but they’re few and far between. We call those guys "freaks." Meanwhile, there are lots of women who would sleep with me; we call them "hookers."

I groan when I touch my toes, but at least I can see my toes. My hair is grayer, but the hair on my chest is supposed to be there. I couldn’t pick up that girl in high school, but I could pick her up now…with a crane.

Is it wrong to mock the failures of my classmates just because they’ve regressed into the loser I once was? Shouldn’t I just take this opportunity to be thankful I don’t need liposuction, Botox, or the witness protection program?

Probably. But that would get in the way of my maniacal laughter.

I’m done.

Jason Johnson is the author of You Make a Good Point...Bonehead! He is a Gen-Xer who has not lived with his parents since 2005.