What To Expect When You're Expe...Uh...Reuniting

It all started a few months back. I came home to visit my dog and play some FIFA 07 on my old Playstation 2. My Mom told me "Hey Stupid, there's some mail for you", and threw a postcard sized flyer at me. I'm just kidding. She handed it to me, totally didn't throw it. The card was inviting me to come celebrate the 5 year reunion of the 2012 class of Providence College.

Holy shit.

Friends til the end!

My mind was racing, trying to figure out how the hell time had flown by that quickly. I was counting the years backwards to see if it was really true. I used my PC education to subtract 2012 from 2017 and was still skeptical when I arrived at an answer of 5. It just didn't seem possible. I suddenly had to prepare for what would be one of the more wild weekends of my life since leaving college. I'm not going to recap the entire weekend for you, because it would be A) boring if you weren't there and 2. it wouldn't really be funny/helpful to anyone who didn't go to PC.

This is why I'm going to do something better and give you something that I wish I fully had going into this past weekend: a guideline of expectations. Therefore, allow me to introduce to you the Breakfast at Jimothy's Return From The Dead Great Expectations For When You Reunite After 5 Years Blogpost. For short we can refer to it as the BAJRFTDGEFWYRA5YB.

All of these shirts came with a free bowl of soup

SADNESS - Yes, there will be sadness. The two weeks or so leading up to the big event, you will do plenty of reminiscing to simpler times. Back in college, you didn't really have to worry about being too old to remain on your parent's health insurance. You just had to worry about what time to show up to the bar of your choosing before the line started, or how much of your paper you could fill by regurgitating the same line with different wording. You will most certainly go down the dreaded Facebook path of memories and look at all the fun you had, wishing you were still living that dream. It's a sobering moment to flashback to the last time you could enjoy life before the real world. Such a sobering moment that it'll make you want to drink a Keystone Light just thinking about it.

Where else in the real world can I meet a Hot Dog?

SHAME- You may also experience shame throughout your 5 year college reunion. This can be broken down into three different Shame Departments: Jealous Shame, Regression Shame and Shame Shame.

Jealous Shame is the shame you endure by catching up with peers and realizing how much more people have their shit together than you do. That kid who once threw up the Red Velvet Cake in your hallway Sophomore year that he had for dinner before drinking too many 1$ beers on a Thursday? He's engaged and making 3x the money you are. The girl who saw you in your Austin Powers costume on Halloween senior year and asked if you were George Washington? She's doing way better than you. Sure, some of the people you will be happy for, but most will have you asking where the hell did I go wrong? (Answer: choosing psychology as a major is where you went wrong). This of course is easier to handle if you are one who actually has their life together and is doing well at this point in your life, and if so, you suck.

Find me on any 1$ bill

The Regression Shame is more related to the fact that you are now 26-27 and can't hang like you used to, or you can hang that long but the consequences are FAR worse than when you were 18-22. I'm not a big believer in magic, witchcraft, voodoo, sorcery, whatever, but I do believe that when you walk across that stage on graduation day, you lose your drinking capabilities the second you shake the hand of your school's President. It's some sort of whacky transfer thing that doesn't make any sense, but once you do it, you simply can't drink like you used to. It's like a weird unspoken graduation ceremonial ritual. I've been asking around various friends the past 2 days, and it is absurd how many people have lost their voices, had hangovers creeping into Tuesday, and have sworn off drinking ever again after this past weekend. It almost seems that drinking extremely cheap beer up til 5 in the morning for two straight nights is a bad idea or something. You'll end up hurting, and you'll be amazed that you once did this kind of shit regularly for a 4 year period of your life.

Shame Shame is the type of shame that will be brought back up while you and your friends are discussing stories from your glory days. I mean, just think about the embarrassing stuff you did back then and tried to forget. You may have successfully blocked out that time you threw up on your friend on St. Patrick's Day after finishing your Irish Car Bomb and then had to finish hers because she was a whimp, but as that hunk James Franco learned from Jonah Hill in Super Bad, "People Don't Forget". I really don't need to elaborate on this one, do I?

DRAMA- Well now this is exciting! Who doesn't want to add a little pinch of drama into the blender already containing too much alcohol and old memories? Chances are you'll see that person who screwed you over on that group project in your Finance class, or the girl you had a crush on and broke your heart when she hooked up with 4 of your suite-mates Junior year. Grudges can last a lifetime. Drama was what made Jersey Shore such a successful train wreck, and it has the possibility to do the same for your 5 year reunion.

Maybe you'll want a bit of revenge on someone. For instance, I had never been so personally insulted then when some douche neighbor of mine senior year went around telling people that my whole house was lame and still wore American Eagle clothing. The fact that I was lumped into this gross accusation that I wore that stuff made me want to hurl. Last I checked you can't buy a FIDLAR, Wavves or Japandroids shirt at American Eagle, Jackass. I was looking forward to being drunk enough to tell him to his face to go kick a brick, but unfortunately I didn't see him and kinda forgot about it until now, but you get the point!

Former American Eagle Model

Maybe you'll finally reveal a crush on someone you've had but were too afraid to tell that person 5 years ago. I was looking forward to finally telling Dot the lunch lady that she was the light of my world, but she wasn't working this weekend (hope you're doing well/still alive Dottie!). Maybe you'll randomly hook up with someone you didn't even know went to your school. You can rekindle former flames, wreck some still-fresh marriages, and toy with the feelings of others who deserve it. The choice is yours, but it can certainly be a dangerous game. Godspeed with that. As a dear friend once told me, "True Love is Not A Lie"...or is it?

SHENANIGANS- Lastly, and most importantly, as long as you went to a fun school with people who enjoy having a righteous time, shenanigans will absolutely be involved. This may be the biggest wild card of the group. Was I expecting to play in a game of 50 vs 50 Flip Cup at 3 am in a hallway? Nope. Was it awesome? Damn straight it was. You can reconnect with the people you want to, beat them at drinking games and then commiserate over how hungover you are at brunch the following day. Trying to do shots of Kamikaze at your old bars with your fellow marketing majors is a surefire way of briefly curing the real world blues. Go put Ke$ha (bless her) on the jukebox, follow it up with T-Swift 'Love Story' if you really need to (actually, please don't) and then burn the place to the ground with a Taking Back Sunday 'Cute Without the E' sing along. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you have one night or a weekend to work with for your college reunion, don't blow it. Go crazy and enjoy the shit out of it, because these sort of things happen only once in a lifeti...every 5 years. But still, 5 years is a long time. Go get drunk and sneak a table out to the quad and play beer pong or something.

He was rightly dropped at the conclusion of this photo.

I saved shenanigans for last because I wanted to leave this on a high note (whoa look at me being optimistic for once!). When it comes down to it, it'll be a delightful time. It's an escape from the real world for a brief weekend. This past weekend was like a time warp back to the favorite period of my life, with people that I adore, doing stuff that I enjoy, like drinking beer and laughing at old stories of my idiot friends. While it may be for our best interests health-wise that this is a once every 5 year event, if you told me we could get the whole gang back together tomorrow I would leap at the opportunity and take a 11 minute Uber ride back to campus.

I may be bias when I say it's impossible to beat a Providence College reunion weekend, give it your best shot. Hopefully your college experience was almost as fun. Enjoy the hangovers! For this weekend only, it'll be worth it.