Please help me figure out what kind of person would do what a classmate did this weekend at our FIFTIETH high school reunion.
Yup. Fiftieth. At this point in our lives, many of us are retired. Many of us have done some incredible things in our long lives. We've married, bred, travelled, opened businesses, become artists, written novels, saved lives, lived in exotic places, and had interesting lives. But how do normal people impart this info at a reunion? We sit around and chat with others, listening to their stories as they listen to ours, although we do have to get up to pee more often than we did back in the day.
Is there always that one person who thinks their life was more interesting than anyone else's?
One of my classmates brought several amps, microphones, two guitars, and a presentation about HIMSELF to our reunion. He asked all 90 of us to sit in a room, facing a 75 inch screen that he had rented for the occasion, which we all did like the sheep we have become over the past few years.
The presentation started with photos and info about the place he lived before he moved to our town. We learned a bit about the house his family of origin lived in. Then his family moved to our town. We were reminded about who his first and second girlfriends were (I was #2, lucky me). We heard about how he came to enlist in the Navy (on a lark), how he hated running nuclear power plants while there, how he went on to become a trainer in running the plants despite his hate for it, how he rose to become an international trainer, traveling to the middle east and dining with kings and sheiks, being interviewed on news shows and developing new technology to train the plant operators. We found out all about how he met his second wife (and I mean all), how they vacation every summer, all summer, in Italy, how they live on a gorgeous private lake, and how they spend their days together. There was not a single mention of his children or his grandchildren.
Are you bored yet?
His presentation lasted over thirty minutes! We all sat there very politely, until some of us had to get up to pee. As more and more of us got up to "pee," this fellow droned on, showing us his interviews on TV (thankfully, we didn't have to listen to these in full), shots of his azaleas (all the same color), his vintage cars, and his wife as a teenager.
Then he started to play his guitar and sing! His wife was supposed to sing EIGHT tunes with him, but she apparently was not in good voice, so we were spared that next half hour of THEM, although he did play and sing a few himself. To be fair, he is an astonishingly good guitar player, and that part was engaging, but by then most of us had gotten up and left the room.
Later, when the band started to play, he started complaining that the band was too loud, it was inappropriate music for the gathering because people like to talk to each other when they are reunited.
So I ask again, what kind of person thinks it's OK to dominate a good hour of a reunion, but not let anyone else do the same, not even the band that was hired for entertainment?
This is my entry to 