High school reunion (not the musical)

About two months ago, at Gabe's birthday party at Luca's, my boss Ken said to me, "You're from LA, right? You have a very San Francisco vibe." I thought this was a bit random. He and I were just standing at the bar, waiting for our drinks, and he's known me for at least a year and a half, almost two now, and he knows that I didn't grow up in the Bay Area. And, I too forget sometimes how long it's been since I moved out of my parent's house in LA, how long I've lived on my own in Berkeley and San Francisco, and how rarely I return to LA. And, when I am in LA, there are only just a few people outside of my family that I see, so I wasn't quite ready for a night of high school reunions.

Sophia picked me up and we drove over to the BJ's on Huntington (the restaurant's name never fails to stir up even the slightest of giggles), where we met up with Millie, Linda, and Annie, all friends from high school, some of whom I can't remember the last time I had seen them.

I had the Santa Fe Chicken Salad and their Brewhouse Blond, which was a pale, golden beer. The chicken salad was fine, nothing special. The blackened chicken has an incredibly white color to it and the texture looked a little too smooth, but I didn't question it. The dressing was a creamy salmon-colored concoction. The five of us split the white chocolate and macademia Pizookie for dessert.

Over dinner, we chatted about former high school classmates. I strained to pull up recollections of people's faces (I wished someone had brought our old yearbook) and struggled to think of my own stories of having seen so-and-so. And, as it always seems to inevitably happen when talking about former classmates, we scoffed at who got fat, wondered why divorces were pending, and laughed at the same people who we laughed at when we were teenagers (don't get me wrong though, I was far from the popular cheerleader in high school). I had little to share. I, apparently, had fallen out of touch.

After dinner and a quick drink at the Brass Elephant, Sophia and I met up with Jeanne and her friends at Dave and Buster's at the mall. I had been here only once before and after quickly being overwhelmed, left. But, this time, I was there with people who knew the drill. I still felt out of the place though. I wasn't decked out in my Asian hoochie gear, I wasn't there with my Asian gangster boyfriend, I wasn't 5'4" and 105 lbs, and I wasn't drunk off my overly-sweet Comopolitan (the first thing on the menu that looked decent to me when the waiter came around for our orders). Apparently, I hadn't gotten the memo.

Sophia and I sat there with Jeanne's friends watching and wondering about the people around us. "Why are there so many Asians?" "Why are there so many teeny-boppers?" "Are these kids old enough to drink?" It seemed as if everyone there had just turned of legal drinking age and were home from college for winter break. Sophia and I looked at each other, knowing that we were probably the oldest ones in the crowd (until some fifty year-old-looking lady showed up, who we thought was there to snatch her child back, like what had happened at the Silver Mug a few days earlier).

Jeanne saw tons of people she knew: the Asian gangster with his cronies, some girl from high school who got fat, our neighbor's daughter who was hoochie-gone-clean. Sophia and I saw no one we knew.

It was a little after midnight and I was tired--of feeling old, of feeling out of place, of feeling far from drunk enough to stay there any longer--so, Sophia and I, the two geriatrics of the crowd, went home.