Author: Big Mama

After the last reunion event on Saturday night, I got in my car and attempted to navigate my way out of downtown Beaumont. Downtown areas always seem to get the best of me because they involve a lot of one way streets that seem to lead to a lot of locations, none of which seem to be the location I’m actually interested in. So I locked my doors and meandered around until I finally saw a sign that read “I-10”. I wasn’t sure that was what I was looking for, but I figured it was an interstate and, worse case scenario, I’d end up in Baton Rouge.

While driving around, I scanned through the available radio stations in the hopes of finding some decent music to listen to as I possibly headed to the Louisiana state line. When I last lived in Beaumont, twenty years ago, I was a big fan of B-95 FM because they alternated between a mix of Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Erasure and Depeche Mode. What’s not to like?

Other than “Shake Your Love” since even at the tender age of seventeen I knew it was just a little too peppy and the odds were not in favor of it becoming a classic, as opposed to “Chains of Love”.

Right about the time I discovered that I was actually headed the right way, I stumbled upon Kenny Rogers singing “Lucille”. Just to clarify, I found it on the radio. I didn’t actually run into Kenny Rogers standing on a street corner singing it, although if I had it would have easily qualified as one of the top ten moments of my life. I think I’ve mentioned before that, during the formative years of my childhood, my Pa-Pa drove a baby blue 1977 Fleetwood Cadillac and the “Kenny Rogers’ Greatest Hits” album was permanently stuck in the 8-track player. I was a young, impressionable girl and, even though I didn’t exactly understand what he meant when he warned Ruby not to take her love to town, I knew she should have listened to him and stayed home.

So there I was, aimlessly wondering the streets of Beaumont and listening to Kenny Rogers when it dawned on me that my Pa-Pa was probably doing the exact same thing twenty years earlier, except he was in a sweet ride with an 8-track player. I turned up the volume on “Lucille” and sang my heart out because, even though it’s a dreadful song about a woman leaving her husband with four hungry (not four hundred as I used to believe) children and some crops in the field, it makes me so happy. Maybe he deserved it. Why was he counting on her to help with those crops in the field anyway? Shouldn’t that have been his job?

The next morning (I eventually found my way home) my sister and I loaded our two hungry children in the car, stopped to buy some cookies for the road and began the long journey home. We hadn’t been on the road for more than five minutes when guess what I heard on the radio?

“Lucille”

I almost felt like it was some sort of sign, but a sign of what? Am I about to come into some land that will yield crops? Will I have four hungry children? Is my radio stuck on some “All Kenny All The Time” station?

As it turns out it was just purely coincidence which is such a relief because what would I do with some crops?

I’d had the good fortune to find the best classic country station ever. EVER. It’s 97.1 in Houston which, to my great joy and delight, transmits all the way to Beaumont and lasted for about two and a half hours of our road trip. It was like listening to a soundtrack of my childhood and I seriously clapped my hands with joy when we hit the Houston city limits and, I kid you not, Larry Gatlin started singing “Houston” and then five minutes later it started raining and Willie began to sing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”. It was like the radio could see into my soul.

I was so inspired that I got home and immediately downloaded the following songs to my iTunes:

1. “Danny’s Song” – Anne Murray
2. “Two Doors Down” – Dolly Parton
3. “Lucille” – Kenny Rogers (obviously)
4. “Somebody’s Knockin” – Terri Gibbs
5. “Looking for Love” – Johnny Lee (I’m embarrassed it took me this long)
6. “Good Hearted Woman” – Waylon Jennings
7. “Jolene” – Dolly Parton (seeing all the Dolly options was like opening Pandora’s box)
8. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” – Willie Nelson
9. “Lousiana Woman, Mississippi Man” – Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn
10. “It Must Be Love” – Don Williams

I’ll be honest. I think I got a little carried away, but I don’t regret it for one instant because listening to all these songs brings me right back to somewhere around 1979. It’s just too bad that I can’t listen to them on an 8-track player.

And in case I feel the need to download about twenty-six more songs, what would your choices be?

After attending my twentieth high school reunion this weekend, I am headed to the store to stock up on some Sudoku puzzle books to help my cognitive function because I discovered I have a terrible memory. All I can say is I will be forever thankful for the name tags complete with senior year portraits that everyone was forced to wear because otherwise I would have had to ask an embarrassing amount of people who they were instead of glancing awkwardly at their stomachs where their name tags hung on a fancy lanyard made of yarn.

Of course I wasn’t necessarily grateful for my own personal name tag because it was a reminder that my hair didn’t even fit in the frame of the picture. Several people remarked on the size of my high school hair when they looked at it and I was quick to point out that I had plenty of time to roll my hair with three different sets of hot rollers because I spent no time at all plucking my eyebrows.

I had a great time and there were so many people that I enjoyed catching up with in person and not just through their photo albums and brief profiles on Facebook that let me know they enjoy watching “30 Rock” and vintage Richard Simmons exercise videos.

The nice thing about a twenty year reunion as opposed to the ten year version is that everyone is more relaxed. It didn’t feel like anyone had anything to prove or tried to play the “my life is better than yours” game. We were just glad to see each other and hear about the ups and downs of life because after twenty years we’ve all had our share of things that turned out like we thought, but probably more things that haven’t.

It’s not like twenty years ago I would have hoped to write on the internet because all I knew how to do was type in some DOS code that made my name scroll down the computer screen in little asterisks and, besides that, who would actually have a computer in their home for personal use? And internet? I do not know of what you speak.

Also, I am not married to Tom Cruise which really turned out for the best because he’s not all he was cracked up to be in “Top Gun”.

Our valedictorian was asked to make a speech at the dinner on Saturday night and he’s still brilliant because he used at least six different words that I’ve never heard. I made a note to look them up later so I’d know what he was talking about, but I have no idea how to spell them and, to be honest, I can’t even remember them at this point.

(Seriously, I’m buying Sudoku today. But I think it involves numbers so maybe just some crossword puzzles instead. Or maybe I won’t remember to buy either one.)

Later on, I talked to him and met his fiance’. She asked what group I was in and how we knew each other. I told her I was in some of the smart classes in spite of the fact that I was a National Honor Society reject due to my inability to pass Algebra II on my first two tries. I said I felt like all the smart kids knew I was an imposter, but the valedictorian said he didn’t feel that way at all and I should have hung out with them more because they played some mean rounds of Chess on the weekends after band practice, which is totally what my friends did on the weekend but without the Chess and the band practice.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun and laughed until I cried with old friends. The only sad part was when they called everyone to the dance floor to do the Cupid Shuffle and I had no idea what they were talking about. Apparently they sent out a link so we could practice the moves at home before the reunion but I didn’t pay any attention the email.

So in a way it really was like high school because I felt like everyone was totally prepared for some sort of test and I didn’t even know I was supposed to be studying.

Granted, we never had any tests on some sort of tricked-out line dance which is really too bad because that would have been a useful life skill, as opposed to Algebra II.

Maybe I’ll learn it in time for the thirtieth reunion.

Of course by then I’ll have to be careful not to break a hip.

(I’m referring to the Cupid Shuffle, not Algebra II. Just wanted to be clear.)

Yesterday morning my sister and I packed up our two girls, twenty-five children’s movies on DVD, and a plethora of snack items to head out on the vast expanse known as I-10 to travel to Beaumont, Texas.

P had a discussion with some friends while they were pre-fishing for a fishing tournament last weekend. Apparently you have to pre-fish before the actual fishing can occur. It’s like a warm-up or something, although I don’t know that the fish realize they are only being pre-fished as they’re being pulled from the water with a hook in their mouth.

Anyway, the conversation turned to crimes being committed as a result of people constantly posting their whereabouts on Twitter, Facebook, bulletin boards in grocery stores, or ads in Thrifty Nickel, then criminals using that information to know when the house will be empty so they can break in a rob someone blind.

When he got home he told me that I need to be careful about broadcasting our every move. Let me put you on notice that if you are a nefarious criminal who just read that I am in Beaumont, and you’re now devising a plot to break into our home and steal our sweet low-definition 19-inch television set, P is actually still at home and will most definitely be armed with what could be a pink .22 but is probably something with a little more power, such as a purple .38 Special and an enormous garden spider.

(For those of you who were concerned, I would never kill that spider. I don’t envision us cuddling up or becoming gal pals anytime soon, but she is more than welcome to hang out in my yard.)

Other than hearing “Are we at Nanny’s house yet?” approximately 874 times within the first thirty minutes of the drive, the trip was fairly uneventful. However, I have to mention that we stopped at Cracker Barrel in Houston for lunch and, while we were paying our check, this man standing in front of me complimented me on my lovely pedicure and then went on to tell me that I had beautiful feet.

It was possibly the most awkward thirty second encounter I’ve ever had at a Cracker Barrel or, well, anywhere. In hindsight, I guess I could have complimented him back on his super-sporty satin jacket but words failed me at the moment.

Once we arrived in Beaumont we visited for a while, then headed to Casa Ole for dinner because they hold my heart in the palm of their microwaved enchiladas and green sauce. The Mexican food snob in me hates myself for loving it like I do, but I am powerless to resist its mass-produced charms.

After we got home, I was catching up on the news of the day (Fox News, MSNBC, People.com) and was sad to see that John Hughes passed away, yet it seems sadly appropriate that he died on the eve of my twenty-year high school reunion since his movies pretty much defined my teen years. I mean, who didn’t want to be Molly Ringwald and drive around in a Kharman Ghia, wear odd little crocheted vests, and yell “What about prom, Blaine? What about prom?”, or even wish that you could get detention on a Saturday morning?

For the record, I actually did my share of detention time for excessive tardiness, because my car had a mind of its own and couldn’t make it to school until it stopped for a Coke at the Texaco Quik Mart, and it was never that much fun. There was virtually no crawling around in air ducts or therapy sessions where we all bonded and had new found respect for each other.

Anyway, later tonight I’ll see people I haven’t seen in twenty years and we’ll laugh about the good times we had when we were all part of the Allotropic Forms Club, except that I wasn’t actually in the Allotropic Forms Club because they were a little snobbish about the rules stating that you had to actually take AND PASS Physics.

But I’ll have you know that other than some basic coordination issues, I excelled at Dance Team and serving as part of the dance decoration committee for Student Council. People still talk about our “Winter Chalet” Valentine’s dance decorations and, by people, I mean me.

Actually I don’t talk about it because that would be demented and sad, but I still have fond recollections.

And what kind of high school memories do those kids have that were in the Allotropic Forms Club or the Trapezoidal Tendencies Club? Other than the memory of learning things that got them into Harvard and helped them become millionaires by the time they were thirty?

It’s not like any of those things required real skills like making hearts out of doilies or doing high kicks on the 50-yard line.

But maybe John Hughes was right. Maybe somewhere in each one of us we were a brain, an athlete, a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal.

Of course these days I tend to hover more around basketcase/princess territory, but on the upside my feet have obviously never looked better. I’ll make sure to wear sandals this weekend in the hopes my former classmates will notice them instead of the fine lines I’ve developed in the last twenty years.

Twenty years.

In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I’d love to hear your favorite quote from a John Hughes movie if you want to share with the group.

Y’all have a great Friday.