Girls Most Likely

I thought that I was fearless until the piece of paper that every sane adult over forty dreads arrived in my mailbox on a June afternoon: the invitation to my thirtieth high school class reunion PURPLE TIGERS, CLASS OF 1971 IT'S REUNION TIME! date: friday, august 25 time: 7:00 p.m. until ? place: the imperial arms be there or be square rsvp to darla martin-gilmore by august 5 we look forward to seeing YOU!!!! Damn it! I said to myself, fingering the white envelope trimmed in purple. I wondered if the French Foreign Legion was still in existence. I hadn't used my high school French in over twenty years but there were refresher courses. Maybe it wasn't too late to join the Witness Protection Program. Why, for God's sake, the Imperial Arms? It had seen better days. Like forty years ago. And the buffet wasn't that good even then. You have some choices, my conscience advised. You can kill yourself now or mark the envelope "Addressee Unknown" and drop it into the mailbox . . . or you could go. Oh grow up, I answered back. What's wrong with suicide? I would be fifty in a couple of years so I figured there weren't many things left in the world that could really scare me. After all, I was on my second marriage. I was not afraid of the darkI outgrew that when I was four. I will admit that I am the only mom who sits at the bottom of the bleachers at my son's football games. Heights make me queasy. And yes, cancer and Alzheimer's worry me. So I eat broccoli and do crossword puzzles to keep the gray cells from getting squishy. But other than that, I thought I was fearless. But there's nothing like the invitation to your thirtieth high school reunion to put ice cubes in your intestines. Maybe I could run away from home. "Hey! What's up?" My son, Keith, or "Jaws" as we call him because of his feeding habits, joined me in the hallway. He was chomping on an apple, talking with his mouth full, and holding a jar of peanut butter in one hand. Life was normal. "What's with the psychedelic envelope?" he asked, with a burst of laughter in his voice. Bits of apple went everywhere. "High school reunion," I answered. "And clean up that mess!" "Ho, ho! How many years is it, Mom? Thirty-five? Forty?" "Thirty, thank you. Get it right," I retorted. "You're old." "If you don't watch it, I'll stop feeding you," I warned him. "Purple Tigers? Oh, this ought to be good. You old-school fogies limping around the dance floor to Al Green . . ." "No, the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire," I countered. I was remembering the wonderful music. "And there isn't anything 'old school' about it. It's just real music where people actually play the instruments. You know, musical instruments? Saxophones, trumpets, guitars?" Keith shook his head and took another monstrous bite. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. You're going, right?" He patted me on the top of my head. One of the lovely things about having a nearly grown son is that when he gets to be taller than you are, he treats you like an armrest. "Go away, shoo," I said, pushing his two-hundred-pound frame toward the kitchen where it belonged. "Don't forget we have to talk about that football camp this evening. Oh, and that girl called again." I call her "that girl" because she hasWilliams, Sheila is the author of 'Girls Most Likely', published 2006 under ISBN 9780345464767 and ISBN 0345464761.