A Step Back In Time...

I don't really know what to talk about today but I felt the need to do some talking to no one in particular today so here it goes!

Let's throw it back a couple of years...10 to be exact.

June 1999. The Backstreet Boys were dominating the charts, everyone was "Livin' La Vida Loca" (much to my enjoyment). Back in the days were you could bring whatever the hell you wanted to on an airplane. "Friends" was the hot show on TV, Clinton was still in office, the Braves were still "The Braves" and you knew all of the players on the team. Before the days of ipods, facebook, twitter, wireless internet...hell this was even before the Game Cube came out! (What on Earth did we do with our time back then?!?!)

I had just graduated from high school. Poised to begin college at Auburn University in their college of business. International Business. Sounds fancy enough I guess. I don't even know what that means exactly. But I do know that Mom still likes to mention that to people when they ask about my time at Auburn.

Anyhow...to make a longer story somewhat shorter, I find myself being constantly reminded of the fact that it's been 10 years since high school ended a lot lately and for several reasons: One of my high school friends posted as her status the other day that it had been 10 years to the day that we graduated. Another reason being that I'll be turning 28 not too long from now...10 years from the awe and hype of celebrating that ceremonial 18th birthday. Lastly, I have received at least 3 reminders today alone about the upcoming class reunion for Wheeler High School's Class of 1999 10 Year Reunion. Not that I don't mind the reminders - I'm glad that someone has taken care of it!

I was a little shocked to see that tickets for the event are $70 per person! PER PERSON! Talk about sticker shock! I find it hard to justify spending that money to attend a reunion to see a bunch of people who I was never all that close to begin with. Sure, I had my solid group of friends...many of them I still keep up with. Those are the ones I'd like to see again. Which brings me to my point: Right now, I don't think I can justify paying $70 just to attend an event with a lot of people I was never really close with to begin with.

I found an article on Time's website about how Facebook is affecting school reunions (Read it here at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904565,00.html?cnn=yes). It basically says how things like Facebook and Twitter have really made it easy to reconnect and keep your network of people intact where as 10 years ago, setting up a reunion or finding everyone who was once in your high school class was more of a monumental task involving many different organizations.

My older sister gets together with a good sized group from high school on a semi-regular basis on their own terms: meeting at a restaurant, someone's house for a cook out, etc. This is the way I'd like to do it. Technology today gives you the means to reach massive amounts of people with a mouse click or 2. Sites like Facebook give you the run down on people's lives in pictures and in stories and other posts. It's not like there's been massive amounts of time that you haven't heard what so-and-so is up to. That information is easy to find on the world wide web. Sure you might not see hundreds of people from your high school at once, but is it really satisfying trying to juggle that many people and catch up with all of them in 4 hours?

Maybe it's just me...I'm certainly the kind of person who likes a little more one-on-one time to get a little more decent conversation. I'm not a mingler. I don't find that very satisfying. Sure I can do it - I do it every day at work but I'd rather sit down with someone and have an actual conversation that means a little more than "How have you been? What are you doing now?" It's all about connection for me and time invested into someone both as an investor and the recipient.

Life has changed quite a bit in 10 years but it doesn't feel like a huge gap is there. The world gets a little big smaller everyday simply because of technology. I'm still undecided if that's a good thing or a bad thing...I think it's mostly good as long as you can keep perspective and look up from your laptop or blackberry every so oftne to notice what's going on around you (I'm probably the pot calling the kettle black on that one, but at least I realize it I suppose!). As for my reunion, we'll see what happens. I wonder if other people are shocked at the price too or if I'm just someone who would rather spend that $70 on something else that will last longer than 4 hours. Who knows what might happen, but I'm sure I'll let you know what happens as soon as someone posts some pictures on Facebook and I check out the pictures on my newsfeed...even while I'm at the event!