MISSidentified

When I was a teenager, I figured that by this time in my life I'd have an amazing, well-paying job, with an amazing wife, three kids (two boys and a girl, just like my parents) and live in a great home, probably near if not in Geneseo, NY, where I grew up. I'd be physically fit, financially secure, with a life that would make everyone else jealous. When we filled out those silly "class superlatives" forms they give you at a reunion, I was going to be the best in everything.

Twenty years later, I had to beg for time off from my mediocre-pay job to leave my cat behind in my rental apartment to spend 12 hours traveling from a desert wasteland (Henderson, NV) to my class reunion. The plans to spend any meaningful time on a treadmill in the months leading up to my reunion did not come to fruition.

Out of my class of 76, I'd known about half for essentially all of life that I remember. Since I got crushes the way others get hungry, I'd had at least a fleeting interest in many of my female classmates at some point. Thanks to Facebook, I knew the rough outlines of their lives. So, I was looking forward to seeing a few people, sort of curious to catch up with a few people, resigned to the fact that a few predictable people would not show up.

And there was one person who I simply did not want to see. George Dranichak only spent two years in our school. He transferred to Geneseo to play hockey and torment me.

So with goals of catching up with some friends, figuring out a way to describe my work situation without using phrases like "insane neat-freak Democratic sycophant with no concept of journalism" or "stuck-in-the-mud small-town inexperienced local cable channel reject," and somehow avoid revealing the fact that I'm still the borderline-depressive emotionally fragile romantically desperate nerd that I've been since 1985 when I first watched "Real Genius," I left my parent's house and walked down the hill to Main Street in Geneseo.

Part of my Geneseo Summer Festival (same weekend as my reunion) (my idea) (every class does it this way) is to grab lunch at Micelli's Deli, where my school teacher sister Amy works for the summer. And she's the one who first mentioned the possibility that I would "reunite with someone and kindle a romance." And she said it in her "annoying little sister" voice too.

That night (Friday) we gathered at the Beachcomber, a bar on Conesus Lake. George arrived about an hour after I did, and he was all smiles and glad-to-see-yous, and my petty resentments dissolved.
I noticed a few things that night:

• John Wiley's wife, Jenn, seemed to be the only spouse comfortable with just talking to people without her husband around.
• The loud people were still loud.
• Everyone was married.

Well, not everyone. There were a few people who were formerly married. One classy classmate even announced "I'm separated and I'm getting laid." I'm sure my sister Amy didn't mean her.

We were asked to fill out a sheet and vote about our classmates. A few people voted for me for "traveled the longest distance" and "Still has his hair." We were asked to vote for "hottest" of each gender. I looked around, and made a choice that I would not have expected in high school. I wrote down her name. Then I (awkwardly, I'm sure) inserted myself into her conversation and noticed that she did have one rather unattractive feature that I didn't remember from high school: a band of gold around the fourth finger on her left hand.

I went over to the fire. On the bench next to me was a classmate named Joe working on a classmate named Julie. She was a cute but quiet, almost mousy, girl in high school. Joe was working hard, but Julie wasn't buying. I don't really remember the details, but I'd identified her as the only single woman there in our class. Who knew if she has a boyfriend now -- and that information didn't seem important to Joe. He'd made the same identification. I don't think he got anywhere; he bought me a beer Saturday at Kelly's, and Julie was no where to be seen.

I made my way back over, and found a group of people, including George. They were passing around the yearbook. and George flipped to my picture. "Where's that guy?"
Jaws dropped. "George, that's me."

Attempting to laugh it off, George flips again, to Julie's picture, and he starts. He'd identified Julie as his target too. He was talking about Julie how she was beautiful.
"She looked young in high school, which wasn't good, but she looks young now, and that's real good." He had a few more crude comments that I'd rather not write. Look at who is crushing like others get hungry now. Made me feel less bad about prejudging him a few hours earlier.

Identities from 20 years ago no longer mattered. Identities from that weekend didn't matter. It's my identity moving forward that matters.

If this were the Hollywood version of my life, Julie would be coming out to visit me in a few weeks. Actually, she'd knock on my door after I hit "post" for this entry, and then the shot would dissolve to a shot of George mooning over a picture of her. Don't get confused here: I'm not interested in Julie, and that's the point. I used to get crushes the way I get hungry. I guess now, I don't.

So maybe the one big personal life achievement, the one that no one is going to notice, the one that no one is going to note on some silly class superlatives form that gets filled out while drunk...  is that I'm not that borderline-depressive emotionally fragile romantically desperate nerd anymore.