Here's an odd thing. There is a little storefront on the corner of Main Street and Geer Street about a hundred yards from my parents' house. Twenty years ago it contained something called Moultons, which I guess was a deli, or something; I only know for sure that they sold Topps baseball cards for 45 cents a pack. Moultons is long gone, and various other things have occupied the space, but it is now a Hawaiian gift shop called "Pineapples and Coconuts" or some such. That makes it, for all I know, the only Hawaiian gift shop in the state. The proprietor really is from Hawaii and really does stock the Spam and the Lion coffee just like a Ranch 99 in Diamond Bar. How peculiar it would have been if it had been there the year Jen came for Christmas.

On the Saturday before Christmas, my high school class had a small 10-year reunion. Not that my class could ever have a large reunion, since there were only 85 members. Here are two of them: Marci, on the left, was the other member of (as far as I know) the only debate team that Cromwell High School ever had. We entered a statewide tournament that was held during the 1996 election season, which we won. No lie. I have savings bonds to prove it. Lori, on the right, was one of my friends and the other half of the school newspaper. One of the guys is my middle school principal, who remembers us all, Lord knows how. The guy that doesn't look like my middle school principal is Lori's current boyfriend, who is from Colorado.

A number of people reminded me that the reunion was ostensibly my job to organize, having been Class President. So I told each of them that I was officially delegating my executive authority to them. It was surprisingly comfortable to show up at this event, where except for the occasional husband or girlfriend, every person in the room knew who I was. I was even confident enough that this would be so, that I showed up by myself—I won't even show up to Mary's party two blocks away by myself.

There's nothing like a room full of people who haven't seen you since you were 18 to put your adult life into perspective. What have I done in 11 years? I mean, I have been reasonably successful and have many things to be thankful for. I have a job that is one of the most competitive in the world (albeit in an obscure field) and all the material possessions I could ever want, but that only comes out as "I live in California and do computer stuff." That doesn't sound like much when you have just been introduced to somebody's husband as "the smartest person I ever knew."

And as a bizarre aside, I did talk to the infamous Jen Hagel, probably more than the sum total of all the conversation I ever had with her in high school. (If you don't know why Jen Hagel is infamous then you can operate the google yourself, because she was perfectly nice to me and I don't feel like rehashing the sordid melodrama.)

I hate posed picures, but that's all you get when you take out a camera in this setting.