“I’m homeless, in between jobs, and living with my in-laws. How are you doing?”.
I had my answer ready to go. But to what question? As luck would have it, my high school reunion was scheduled during the few days we had between moving out of our house in Pittsburgh and flying to Doha. The luck part is that we were planning to be in Michigan to visit family at that time anyway so I was able to attend. My lovely spouse (and your regularly scheduled mistress-of-the-blog) showed that she can be an extraordinarily good sport and agreed to come with me. Whew. Didn’t want to have to add ‘umm, she couldn’t make - she and the kids moved back in with her parents’ to my answer.
The question, of course, was ‘how are things going?’, ‘what have you been up to?’, etc. All the standard high-school reunion questions. I had my answer all ready to go. It was fun to see people’s expressions when I answered. Many different flavors of ‘uhh, sorry I asked.’ But in almost all cases it was a good conversation starter, rather than the conversation killer it sounds like.
I guess that’s because I am fortunate to be able to explain that these were all good things, in their own way - homeless because we had sold our house a few days earlier (which greatly impressed my Michigan friends who have watched the housing market collapse locally), between jobs because I’m moving to Qatar in a few days to start an exciting new one (sounding good to my friends working at GM and Chrysler), living with my in-laws because we’re visiting on vacation. It wouldn’t be so fun without the follow-up. Given the state of the economy and the housing meltdown in Michigan, I’m afraid that some of my classmates probably had similar answers but without the fun follow-up. Michigan’s economy really is that grim now. I wish them the best. It’s sad to see your home town and the people you grew up with suffering.
As with the last reunion I went to ten years ago, this one was a lot more fun than I expected. Although only a few of my close friends from high school made it to the reunion (those of you who did - thanks so much for making the trip), it was fun to see how people had grown - in most case more body, less hair - and chosen to live their lives. Even my good sport of a spouse seemed to have a good time.
Oh yeah, the elephants. I posted a picture on the reunion web site of your intrepid adventurering family on an elephant ride in Sri Lanka prior to the actual get-together. Apparently it generated a lot of interest. Before even making it to the registration table at the party I had three people stop me and ask what we were doing riding an elephant on the other side of the world. For the rest of the night, almost everybody I met wanted to hear about the elephant. I guess my concept of what’s exotic and far away has changed more than I realized in the past couple of years. Sri Lanka seems a lot more exotic to my friends in Michigan than it does to my friends in Doha. Funny how your perspective evolves, sometimes without your even being aware of it...
