Rank Reunion

I was so looking forward to my 25th class reunion and I was so disappointed. Our 20th reunion was at a golf resort way in woods. Since I don’t golf, I voted for a beach resort for this one. It seems I was alone in this.

We checked into the St Pete Beach resort early and toured the place. After having been to Opryland earlier this year, calling the place a “resort” was a stretch. They had a dank looking creek with paddle boats, a couple of pools, and a inflatable beach slide.

What we didn’t see were any classmates. It got even more ominous when I went down to sign-in. The Friday reception was booked into the smallest meeting room they had. They had a list of people that had pre-registered. There were 45 names out of a class of more than a thousand. There were a few people registering at the door, but it wasn’t exactly gangbusters.

Several walk-ups looked into the room and saw three buffet dishes of tepid hors’dourves and a cash bar and decided it wasn’t worth the eighty bucks the reunion company was charging. Instead, they stayed in the lobby where the hotel bar had cheaper, stronger drinks and the real party quickly moved out there.

The standing joke became how lame and poorly attended the event was. Several former members of the golf team were there, so I got to tell my story about the team captain getting mad at me at the five year reunion for ruining his life. In turn, they told me about how later that night the salutatorian got in a fist fight with his best friend. None of them had seen the guy in over a decade and weren’t sure what happened to him.

Fortunately, to save the weekend, we were sharing a suite with some good friends that we had gone to high school with. While they were both classmates of ours, they didn’t start dating until after high school. We also spent some time hanging out at the beach with a few other intra-class couples.

The main dinner had a total attendance of sixty including dates and spouses. The women were dressed to the nines and there was plenty of cleavage on display. Alas, on the backside of forty, that wasn’t always a good thing. The DJ ran a great music trivia contest, but once the real dancing started, the floor emptied after a half-hour and remained dead for the rest of the event.

I think the expense of both the event and the resort kept many people away. Having a reunion within five years of the last one may also have been too soon. There was a survey for when and where to have the next one. My vote was to just pick a date and a bar and just tell people to show up. It couldn't turn out worse.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What has been the lamest event you ever attended?