7 minute read
OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS
OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS
I went to my wife’s 50th high school reunion the other night. I didn’t want to go because to do so would involve me putting on some long pants and driving after dark, not to mention talking to people and dancing, but she and I had made a deal many long years ago, and deals should be honored, unless, of course, you are rich and powerful, in which case you can apparently just do whatever the hell you want to. Since I have never been either of these and have had to settle instead for wildly talented and ruggedly handsome, well, I willingly made the compact with her all those years ago and have abided by it ever since.
This deal-making came about during our child-getting years, which were admittedly much more trouble for her than they were for me, and which culminated in her pointing out to me that obvious fact after delivering baby number four. She then observed that since she had produced the wee bairns, I could look forward to teaching them to drive, taking them camping, and selling fundraising candy on their behalf at work, among other things. These were very reasonable requests on her part, and I did not mind any of these duties in the least, mostly because I was younger then and did not fully understand the absolute horror to come of teaching two girls and two boys to drive.
But you know me, and since you do, you know that I always have to go for the laugh. It’s a genetic thing, really, like high cholesterol, pattern baldness, and hauntingly blue eyes, and I can’t help it. So I unwisely pointed out that perhaps Eve, of Adam and Eve fame, should teach the kids to drive, since if certain ancient and notoriously unreliable texts were to be believed, she was the root cause of the whole child-bearing issue.
Hey, I was kidding, y’all. I am a card-carrying member of The Darwin Society, a strict evolutionist who firmly believes that someday humans might evolve into something a bit more humane. But my wife took it amiss anyway—perhaps cracking wise right there in the delivery room wasn’t the optimal time—and before I knew it, she had added weddings, funerals, and reunions to the list of activities I could expect to be participating in, just before asking me if I had any more commentaries of the “supposedly funny” variety to make. I did not, and thus I retired from the field before she added taking the kids to the opera to the list.
If you are wondering, let me put your mind at ease. There is actually a document that spells all of this out, signed and notarized, with various changes and updates initialed by both parties over the years, and with penalties for failure to comply spelled out in specific and unpleasant detail. It begins with “Now Therefore,” and concludes with “Fail Not,” and packed in between those two phrases are three pages, single spaced, of my end of the deal, because my wife and her attorney are nothing if not thorough. I have often wondered what he was doing there in the delivery room, with his mask and gown and legal pad, but I decided long ago to just let that be one of life’s great mysteries. The official copy of the contract is at his office along with our wills and other important papers, but the working copy is in her pocketbook, ready to be whipped out and consulted at a moment’s notice.
Ask me how many additional Eve jokes I have made during the past 40 years. Go ahead. Ask me.
Anyway, off to the 50th reunion we went. It is one of the truths of the human condition that we tend to measure the passing of our lives in terms of milestones, and any milestone containing the number 50 is considered extra special, as it should be. When you consider that the average American lifespan is 76 years, 50 years is a big deal. It is also worthy of note that just a few years ago the average American lifespan was a couple of years longer. This loss of longevity has been attributed to both covid and to the chronic apoplexy caused by Hunter Biden’s laptop, and while these factors certainly had an impact, my theory is that a large number of perfectly-healthy-but-now-deceased people made the mistake of watching the news just before going to bed, and as a result of this simply decided to not wake up the next morning.
When we got to the reunion, we drove through the parking lot outside of the high school gym, ostensibly looking for a spot while also checking to see who had driven nicer cars to the event. Oh, like you’ve never. It turned out that we were in good shape on the vehicle front—thank you Enterprise for that, and no I don’t want the coverage—so we parked and entered the building. There were about 200 people in there, 100 former graduates and their plus-ones, and my first impression was that they were all so…old.
I know what you’re thinking. This shouldn’t have surprised me in the least. I mean, I am a sixty-eight-year-old man married to a woman attending her 50th high school reunion. What did I expect, right? The thing is, in my heart and in my head, I am still that same eighteen-year-old kid who drove a ragged Chevy over the state line from Alabama to Georgia looking for a job, a female who would actually date me, and the meaning of life. Okay, I just threw that last one in there to class up the list a bit, but the first two were real. I found a job at Riegel Textile Corporation, and I found a lovely young woman who became my partner in life, and I met a balding, wormy-looking young man with the nickname of Rat who would eventually become her lawyer, and the rest was, as they say, history.
My second impression at the reunion, and it has only taken me about 1000 words to get to this crucial point, and I’m really quite proud of that, was that even though I was in a room full of strangers, I felt like I knew them all. True, the specifics of all of our lives over the past 50 years were different, yet we had all done the same things. We had all met and partnered up with the loves of our lives, and some had done this more than once. We had all set up homes. Some of us had gone to college and some had gone to work, but we had all had careers. We had all known great happiness at times, and we had all survived great sorrows. Most had had children and had spent a big chunk of that 76-year lifespan and a whole lot of cash seeing that they were off to a good start and doing fine.
And now we were all on the other side of all of that, in a room full of people more or less just like us, choosing between the chicken and the brisket, passing on the slaw because it was sweet, and listening to Mustang Sally while wondering where all the time had gone.
Sniff. Excuse me a moment. Okay, I’m better now. Just got a bit maudlin there for a minute. Lucky for me I have some chores to do. Yes, they are all specified in the contract, although now that I’m an older guy, rearranging the furniture might give me some problems. Maybe I’ll get her lawyer to help.
