High School Reunion? Don't Miss It.

Our Twentieth High School Reunion left me with three distinct impressions:

1. Everyone was so incredibly, sincerely NICE.

2. I am not as young as I used to be.

3. I miss people; I value something in relationships that may have meant little at the time. Shared history is shared life.

Is anything more fun than a reunion? Don't all our best memories involve getting together with old friends and family and talking about things and laughing about old times? Isn't a wedding (or in some cases, a funeral) more fun than dinner with the President? Wouldn't you trade front row seats to--whatever--for a chance to re-connect with all your old friends? I would. And my old foes.

And if relationships don't thrill you, consider the tremendous insight. After Sharpstown c/o 1986 had its ten-year reunion, I thought in addition to having so much fun, I had learned one thing valuable: All the cliches about nerds becoming rich and popular-people/jocks being poor are wrong. What a nerd or social misfit might do is probably no more predictable than the general population. But it looks like there IS a correlation between popularity and future job performance: many of them will be successful at whatever they do. After all, they became popular by having great people skills--not to mention being aggressive and competitive, or assertive at least. (And I do not speak to you as one of them, believe me.) After the twenty-year reunion, I can add another detail: almost every single popular male that I know is now in some form of sales, either hard or soft, cars or houses or intellectual property.

Another thing. The reunion was the most fun I have ever crammed into one evening. Like a mountaintop--with a valley, and I was sad it was over the next day. I also felt old, realizing in another twenty years, my daughter will have her own ten-year reunion! (Actually, a number of factors combined to make me feel old.) But mostly, I felt sad. Even though I was so very unhappy in high school, I miss the people--not who they were then, but who they are now, and our shared history. I daydream of a small town where people stay connected all their lives. Whether that ever existed, I don't know--but after the Industrial Revolution, it exists no more. (But then, neither does the yawning poverty that threatened everyone everywhere.)

The 20th was an absolutely huge, life-altering milestone. I am so glad I went.

Below is a series of e-mail messages between me and my very best high school friend. There was never any way he was going to go. But I think he's a bum for missing it. In my e-mails, I am trying to convince him that he actually is interested in the way all these people's lives have turned out. I want him to admit that he was lying when he said "I am just absolutely not interested." (I suspect he was unhappy with his appearance, among other things. I also suspect many no-shows were. There was only ONE person there with any gray hair--and we're all 38--and there were only a handful that had gained weight. That was too bad for all of us.)

(Some of you know this guy....)

Chris--

The reunion was a blast--in spite of how much I hated high school. Several have died. Half a dozen ladies were obviously on starvation diets. Chuck Wehner said you were a tool for not coming--he made me promise to pass that along. He said it affectionately. (Gawd, you were missed.) People asked about you and even about [your sister]. Guess who's a sheriff in Harris County? San Jacinto county? Guess who's a psychotherapist? Flight instructor, radiologist, dentist, and a whole lot of salesmen? Guess who brought his (male) life partner? Guess who had hair to his waist? Guess who came home from Kuwait for the reunion? Guess who got leave from his 20-year navy career? Guess who's been teaching and coaching at Sharpstown for 14 years? (You should know that one.) Guess who thought I was a Democrat just because of my job title? Guess who came from Minneapolis? Guess how many alumns live in Sugar Land? Guess who lives in Denver? Guess who owns two car dealerships?.... Guess who Paul said looked like "Fat Elvis" because of his weight gain? Guess which really popular guy gave me creepy vibes? Guess who suffers gout and has been seen doing yard work on crutches?

But I won't bore you with the details, seeing as how you said you weren't interested....

Steven

After this and other tantalizing messages, CW wrote back and admitted he actually was interested. But at the time, he "was not $120 interested." Victory! And I concede, the fee was ridiculous.

Today I got another message about the reunion--from a friend who was there. My reply:

. . . I have been SO distracted since the reunion. It was so much fun, and so weird at the same time. It's a special event, you know? Getting together after 20 years!? I wouldn't have missed it.

Funny thing, having seen you and Jeff F. both at the ten-year and the next day in Hermann Park, I felt like I had seen y'all just yesterday--and like I would see you again tomorrow. But of course, it's been a decade. But not as much has changed in the last ten years as in the first ten.

Still, it was great to see everyone. I just can't stop thinking about it. In the end, it's going to cost me a lot more than the $63 I paid to get in. Daydreaming is not billable....

I missed a lot of people too. Laura V., for example, married a childhood friend of mine from across town (we went to church together). I haven't seen Glen in 20 years either (though she came to the 10-year). Sorry Robert Munden couldn't make it. I seem to have tracked him down on the east coast somewhere, in a research firm of some sort. But it escapes me at the moment.

I also wonder about Jimmy K. I used to see him at HBU until he got a C in calculus or something and lost his academic scholarship. Then he was a bank teller for a while, but I've since lost touch. His name is common enough, I never even tried to look him up. (But now you've got me curious.) I just have to get back to work and try to stay focused! I can't afford too many reunions...

I looked up Kathy G. after I read she was deceased. Breast cancer in 2000. I had no idea.

It was great seeing you, once again. Thanks for the e-mail. Let's keep in touch.

Steven

FEMA: Federal Emergency Management (Allegedly).

(Don't miss the fine print.)

The Come True-er

My son has been thinking about prayer a lot lately. He's five. Tuesday night at bedtime he wanted to know if he could pray that God would make those men stop taking our money. (We have had several talks about taxes recently.) I laughed when I realized what he meant. (Interestingly, to Marshall the men who take our money are the same as strangers: nice at first, until they get you alone somewhere in the forest. I'm not sure how he came up with the connection, but I find it apt. And no matter how I try, we cannot discuss one without the other.)

So, Marshall prayed those men would stop taking our money. I prayed his childlike faith might be rewarded!

Last night he wanted to know if he could pray for five more days of Vacation Bible School--which ends tomorrow. Both kids have really enjoyed it this year.

"And so, Daddy, Jejjus is the Come-True-er, Right?"
"What?"
"He's the Come True-er. Because if I pray, He'll make it come true. Right?"

1. What Happened to General Motors? Anti-Trust Law

Anti-trust law, conceived and promoted as consumer protection, is actually something else entirely. It was never about protecting the consumer. The idea is that businesses such as Microsoft get too big and then destroy their competition so they can make more money with some unwieldy monopoly. But this scenario is loaded with lies and bad economics. The best known being the mythical "PREDATORY PRICING." This idea that a business would choose to willingly sell at a price below what the market would bear in hopes that competitors would be driven out of business is ludicrous. How long would that take? Months? Years? Even a big business can't afford to operate below cost. And assuming they already have a large market share, predatory pricing then hurts the would-be predator more than it hurts anyone else. And even if current competition went out of business, what about the young upstarts, the new businesses always ready to jump in and sell cheaper than the large monopoly? Even the monopoly will go under if it never recoups its losses from years of selling below cost. And more importantly--PREDATORY PRICING HAS NEVER BEEN PROVEN TO HAVE CREATED A MONOPOLY. It's a losing strategy; you don't become a business success by ignoring profits.

Companies become large and successful by making a better product more efficiently. That is, they sell a good product at a low price. Standard Oil, long ago attacked by a federal anti-trust prosecution, had been providing cheaper and cheaper oil products for fifty years. The price had dropped so much--thanks to Rockefeller's many innovations--that few companies could compete. So they sold their resources to Standard. That's what is supposed to happen in capitalism. The most innovative, most efficient gets more resources and uses them better. In the end, the consumer wins. And that has been true in every anti-trust prosecution to date. The consumers were always winning. But the federal government stepped in anyway, not to protect the consumer (as they always claim), but to protect the less-efficient (but more politically-connected) competition. Anti-trust law has always been at its core ANTI-CAPITALIST.

(Didn't you ever wonder why the corrupt Clinton-Reno Justice Department went after Microsoft? Could they really be the gallant white knight suddenly, rescuing the consumer? No. That was not it at all.)

So many of America's best businesses have been attacked and uselessly prosecuted under bogus anti-trust law that others were afraid they were next. Enter General Motors. Afraid they were next to be sacrificed on the anti-trust altar, in the 1940s and 50s GM settled on a policy: never garner more than 45 % of the U.S. car market. And how does a company keep its share of the market artificially low (in the post-war boom, where people wanted to buy big American cars)? By pricing them too high and building them in a more costly, less reliable fashion. And GM accomplished its goal. It built millions of costly, unreliable cars, and it kept its market share below 45%. But surprise, surprise--suddenly in the 1980s and 90s, GM could no longer compete with the German and Japanese imports. But hey, they avoided an anti-trust suit, the government's way of strangling America's best businesses.

(Another method is tariffs, price controls, and over-regulation. Post-war licensing requirements caused RCA to "outsource" all its techy business--and the Japanese components industry was born. Just one more example of anti-capitalist U.S. law being a boon to foreign competition.)

More to come.