Family Daze: Getting Into Reunion Shape

By the time you read this I expect I will already have gone to one of the most excruciating ordeals devised by modern culture: the high school reunion.

Of course, when I received my invitation, it had seemed like such a good idea at the time: a night out without the kids, a steak dinner, open bar, and catching up with old friends I haven’t seen in ten, all right twenty, years. This just goes to show you that sometimes it’s a funny thing how the mind works.

Any fool knows that reunions are never good idea, mainly because there’s a reason you’ve successfully avoided seeing these people for two decades, which all comes flooding back to you five minutes after the reunion has started. But by then it’s too late.

The first clue that this night wasn’t going to go quite as I had thought should’ve come when I was filling out the information form along with the RSVP. Specifically the part that asked what I’d been doing for the last twenty years.

After several minutes of deep personal reflection, I finally jotted down: "I don’t know."

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the next part was a whole section dedicated to listing all of my outstanding achievements. Call me crazy, but I didn’t think my list of successfully taking two young children to the mall to get new shoes, finding a way to brush my teeth and shower in the same day, and being named most likely to be on time for the soccer car pool was what they had in mind.

Face it, the only hope I had of fooling anybody into thinking I had a life was to arrive in Reunion Shape.

For those of you lucky enough not to know what this is, Reunion Shape is appearing to be younger and thinner than everybody else who is, amazingly enough, the same age as you are. Needless to say, this makes up for any financial or career deficiencies you may have.

Now the problem with this is I needed to find a way to achieve this look fast, without the use of circus mirrors and plastic surgery.

So I did what any desperate modern woman would do: I decided to get a new dress.

I wandered in to a trendy, upscale boutique and whispered to the twenty-something salesgirl, "I’m looking for something to wear to my high school reunion." Which, anybody who’s spent time in the retail business knows, is really secret code for

"I-need-a-dress-that-will-lift-cleavage-constrict-cellulite-smooth-out-stretch-marks-flatten-stomac hs-and-make-me-look-at-least- ten-years-younger."

She nodded knowingly and went to consult with another salesperson in the back of the store. There they both stared me in the mysterious way that people selling clothes often do, then disappeared between the clothing racks. They reappeared several minutes later holding armloads of slinky strapless dresses.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that it takes a special kind of person to carry off wearing slinky strapless gowns and I, according to the mirror in the dressing room, am not one of them.

So I explained this to the salesgirl and she told me she knew just what to do. Within two hours I tried on dress and after dress until I eventually worked my way down to a frumpy outdated cotton number with a lace collar that looked suspiciously like one I had on in the first place.

Oh, all right, I know that a fabulous dress isn’t going to lure my ex-classmates into thinking I’m a successful CEO or a millionaire or even, in fact, employable. But, hey, it might fool them for a little while.

Besides, I know the perfect dress is out there somewhere. I just hope I find it soon. Then all I’ll have to get is a pair of new shoes and a matching leather purse.

And, oh yeah, a portable circus mirror.