GHS Reunion & Haize's Bridal Luau

I know I’ve said this before, but last weekend was the best weekend of my life. Like, my whole entire life. I knew it was going to be – I’ve been planning the details for months. And I’d be willing to bet that hundreds (yes hundreds) of other people will say the exact same thing about last weekend. They’ll each have their own spin on it… things that happened differently, from a different perspective. But this weekend was definitely one for the record books and I am so happy to be able to share it with you!

Last September, I realized my brother starts his senior year of high school in the fall of 2008. After some serious mental strain to calculate how old that made me, I realized it was finally here – the day had come to celebrate my ten-year high school reunion!

At that time, I was becoming seriously addicted to Myspace, as many people I knew had already were. I had just settled in to my job at the Herald and I was finding myself with free time, in front of a computer for several hours a day.

I’m not saying my job is easy, because it’s not. But I absolutely love every thing about it… and once I get started writing a story, I can have it written in no time. It is kind of like this blog, currently spewing from my fingertips. If I can truly wrap my brain around something, it just spills all over the paper. (I think any writer will understand this phenomenon.)

Anyway, so with my new Myspace addiction and hours of free time on my hands, I became reacquainted with several friends back home – from college and from high school. After I posted a few bulletins, asking if anyone knew about or was looking forward to a reunion. Almost immediately, I started getting some response!

Some people were excited. Some were in denial that it had actually been ten years. A couple even volunteered to help spread the word. One girl, Tabitha, my partner in crime for many years back in my younger days, got in touch with our class president, Nat, and his wife/high school sweetheart, Courtney. As it turns out, they had been discussing that very same thing! Before long, a reunion committee was born.

We recruited the help of Rachael, another one of my best friends from more than a decade ago, and Paige, my cheerleading friend and our class reporter, and we got down to business. We met monthly until our agenda was set – then we distributed the workload of everything from locating names and addresses to physically mailing out invitations. Just when we thought our work was through, only 18 people were motivated and organized enough to mail in their RSVPs by the cutoff date.

The reunion, as we knew it, was cancelled.

But thankfully, so many people had already made plans to come in that weekend (as I had) and so many people wanted to still see each other (as I did) that the reunion was salvaged (as I’d hoped it would be).

We met up for dinner last Friday night at the Italian Village – one of the few restaurants in town big enough to hold a significant amount of people. They had already promised us their back room for the original reunion, so they were prepared to accommodate us.

I met up with my best friend since kindergarten, Yvonne, whose wedding I will soon help plan and whose bridal attendant I will soon be, and Rachael (who I mentioned earlier). We got there only 30 minutes late (a new record for Yvonne) and had the most amazing time!

It was breathtaking to see all the faces – everyone had changed so little, yet grown up so much! It seemed as though everyone was having the best time, smiling from ear to ear the whole night, catching up, hugging, talking about careers and showing pictures of kids. Of course, Yvonne, Rachael and I were the only shot-takers of the night, along with our friend Kelli, who I’ve known since the first grade and who I roomed with for nearly three years in college. Actually, Kelli’s parents and my parents hung out regularly when we were young. We had family barbecues together and we went camping on the river. I still see Kelli’s parents every year at the Blue Plum Festival in Johnson City.

Anyway, our little group of drinkers took shots and then most of the group drank beer. Before I knew it, our dinner party had come to an end. But, in true Greene County fashion, an after party was quickly coordinated. Like clockwork, cars filed into Kerns’s driveway one at a time. He went to the same elementary school as Yvonne, Kelli, Lindsay, Nat and I… good old Hal Henard. Man, I loved that school.

His mom, who will always be Mrs. Kerns to me, taught there too – for some reason I’m thinking she was affiliated with the gifted program. She also did something at the high school, although for the life of me, I can’t currently remember what. Anyway, she was as happy to see us as we were to see her. She cooked us teriyaki wings (which I ate about eight of) and sat with us until at least 1:30 or 2 in the morning. 

Then, Yvonne and I left the after party to meet up with some non-high school friends at a local bar. The rest of that night is totally unrelated, yet pretty interesting... but that's a story for another time...

The next morning, Yvonne and I were quite impressed when we woke up an hour before the scheduled tour of the high school. We arrived at the front steps (not the old ones that we posed on for our senior group picture – these were brand new steps) and we were about five minutes early. We beat many of our classmates there. (This was an even bigger landmark for Yvonne, I might add.)

We saw some faces from the night before, a little less chipper, smelling slightly of alcohol. I’d say some of these people hadn’t been up past 10 or 11 in quite a while. (I know I hadn’t…)

The high school was incredible – the whole place had been redone. It is like five times the size it was when we were there – literally. The only things I remotely recognized were senior hall and the field house. But, these are two places I hold very dear, so it was just enough to leave me consumed with a sense of nostalgia. I couldn’t believe how much money had been poured into that place. It was nicer than any school I’ve ever been in. Nicer than any college most of the classmates had attended. I think we have a couple that went Ivy League, but I’d be willing to bet even they haven’t taken class in a building this fancy.

The football field was in the process of a renovation too. They’re putting astro turf down, and (ha ha ha) the joke was on me when I expressed my concern about the gravel all around the field. Apparently, that gravel will be covered up by more astro turf, before anyone actually plays on it.

I thought it was a valid question, and I am not the only one who asked it. (That didn’t stop everyone from laughing at each of us, though.) And I still think those poor boys are going to get their faces smashed in if a helmet happens to pop off, with that gravel underneath there like that. They said the people would put some foam underneath it, or rubber, or something. To be honest, I still don’t really know what’s going to happen. But if they want to impress people with that fancy new field, they need to give those rust covered bleachers a facelift with some green paint or something.

After our tour, Yvonne and I hit McDonalds on the way to a picnic at Hardin Park – the place we all grew up. We had our picnic at the pavilion beside the Caboose. Anyone that grew up in Greeneville, or any small town for that matter, knows how sentimental certain pavilions at certain parks can be. Walking up to that park, seeing the silver elephant slide that burns your legs and butt so bad in the hot summer sun, and the Wizard of Oz swings, and the rickety bridge that crosses the creek… I felt an overwhelming sense of homesick. But I wasn’t longing to live in Greeneville again – I was longing to feel like a kid again.

Speaking of kids, everyone brought theirs to the picnic. Some I’d seen before, like Nat and Courtney’s clan (Jackson, Bryant and Ally), and some I’d only heard about, like Genny’s newborn. Some weren’t even born yet – like Lilly, Lindsay’s unborn daughter (or son… but I’m banking on a girl. Only three of the classmates in attendance had girls, I think. And there were at least ten who’d had boys.) Lindsay was my friend through elementary school, through girl scouts. She used to come to my mom’s house for family barbecues, too. Her nickname was Lizard, so she called me Salamander. She played volleyball and I took dance. I went to her wedding a few years back, and we still stay in touch through email. I hope to travel to Charleston to see her really soon.

Anyway, these kids at the picnic were the cutest kids I’ve ever seen all in one place, and they played together wonderfully. The boys from our class, and even some newly introduced husbands, played catch in the yard beside us. Then, as the kids became interested, they broke off into small groups and these grown men gave every single one of them their undivided attention. It was awesome to see that dynamic. All of them – even the once macho high school boys – were so happy and carefree…

We took lots of pictures. Each of the girls had a camera. Everyone was pretty much used to it from the night before, so no one seemed to mind that we were in constant photo shoot mode. When I realized it was time for me to go, I started saying my goodbyes. I had to high tail it to Johnson City for the second leg of my weekend – my friend Haize’s bridal shower luau.

(I know, it keeps getting better and better, right?)

My sister Beth and I are going to be the bridesmaids in Haize’s wedding, which is coming up in September. We decided a long time ago that we wanted to have a luau. I think that was Beth’s idea, actually, and I just got really excited when we started planning out the details a few months back.

I could not believe the day had finally come… We’d done all the shopping and prepping the two days before, so we just had to decorate and cook and pull together all the loose ends by 3:00.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to the house until 2:00. While Beth’s sanity and mine were slightly thrown off kilter, we pulled it together and quite possibly had the most successful bridal shower in history. As soon as I got to the house, I apologized to Beth for my crappy attitude on the phone… and then we worked as a team to create a tropical bachelorette paradise in our backyard. (One fun fact about the Litvack family: we can accomplish anything, seamlessly, when we put our minds together. We’re kind of like army ants.)

We grilled up skewers of barbeque chicken, peppers, onions and pineapple. We drank mojitos, Blue Hawaiian, Pineapple Upside Down Cake and Purple Haize. We duck, duck, drank shots every hour… we held hula-hoop and diving contests, and Haize busted a piñata right before sundown. Every girl left with a handmade koozie and a shot glass that read “I got smashed at Haize’s birthday party.” All in all, I don’t think any of us could have asked for a better time. Especially Haize. She had the best time ever.

I think it blew her away to realize how much we all love her. We had come together and pulled off this amazing party in her honor. She received several gifts from her registry, and a lot of gift cards that weren’t on her registry… but she’d have been happy just knowing we all were happy for her. That’s why it was so much fun to make a big deal about her wedding. She’s humble like that, and I love it.

By about 11:00 that night, we decided that any boys who wanted to join us could come help wind the party down. Haize’s fiancé, Cory, and his birthday boy brother, Cody, came by for cake and cocktails (and apparently to beat me in a game of pool, dammit – oh wait, that may have been Hans…)

Anyway, by the time I realized the party was over, I was entirely too intoxicated to drive to Greeneville and close down the field party at Uhls’s house. I had missed the Astros game my high school class had attended that evening, but I had still been considering the drive down to meet them later. However, as I said, I was in no shape to go. Instead, I curled up in my sister’s room and slept soundly for the next six or seven hours.

My fantastic weekend ended when I stopped back in Greeneville that next day to say goodbye to Yvonne and see her son, Donavan, who has been my nephew since he was born nine whole years ago. We ate at Pal’s. I get a chipped ham with cheese, no pickle, add tomato, every time I head up that way. Thank goodness they were hungry too – I’d almost completely missed my window of opportunity!

Then, around 4:00, I headed back to Chattanooga to prepare myself for another week at the salt mine. (Like I said, don’t get me wrong, I love my job. But my dad calls work “the salt mine” and I do too…)

I could not have asked for a better weekend. Here it is, Monday night, and I’m lying in bed, writing this blog at 9:00. There are sitcom reruns I want to be watching right now but I can’t make it to the couch to turn on the TV. I will probably be recovering from last weekend for the next several days, at least. I realize that I probably shouldn’t have entered that limbo competition on Saturday… and I would have been smart to catch a little extra shuteye before my drive yesterday evening… but all in all, I don’t have one single regret. I had an amazing weekend, full of old friends and wonderful new memories.

I’m hoping we can recruit some people from the class of ’98 for the Greeneville High School Greene Devils homecoming game this year. I’d love to keep in touch with them – and I don’t think I can wait another ten years to see some of those smiling faces!

And I cannot wait to be a part of Haize’s wedding this fall – it’s going to be so amazing to share such a wonderful week with her, as she marries the true love of her life.