Free Candy For Everyone

I had my 10 year high school reunion over Thanksgiving weekend. I’ve had some people tell me they thought it was a strange time for a reunion, but it makes sense to me. Everyone is back in town visiting their parents anyways. If I had to decide to fly all the way across the country just for the reunion, I’m not so sure I’d go. But fortunately, I didn’t have to make that decision.

Overall, I’m glad I went. There’s a core group of people that I’ve stayed in touch with since graduation, and we all went together. Other than that small handful, I haven’t seen anyone else in 10 years. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t quite what we had. I was surprised by how much people were the same. There were more hairless heads, a few extra pounds here and there, but mostly people looked a bit older, but not all that different.

I had fun chatting with people, though it was a lot of going through the motions. “Oh hi, person-I-haven’t-thought-of-in-10-years! So, where do live? What do you do? Oh really, I live here and do this. Ok, nice, good to see you. Next!” Most people didn’t really listen all that much at all. We were all just making noises and going through motions. How many of those people will even think about each other over the next 10 years, let alone get together again?

One person I spoke to was interested, however, in my job. I mean, I do have a pretty darn cool job. I make video games. For George Lucas’ game company. When you think about it, it’s pretty awesome. Sometimes I need someone’s reaction to remind me of that. So we started talking and he got all animated, “Oh, do you play video games?” And I answered, “Definitely. Always have.” He was impressed.

This was so interesting. If he’d known 10 years ago that I played video games he wouldn’t have thought it was cool. It would have just reinforced his perception that I wasn’t all that popular. We’ve really come a long way. Games haven’t just entered the mainstream, they’ve successfully become hip. I’ve known that, it’s been pretty apparent from my experiences. I have no fear of talking about my love of gaming (um, hello, I have a whole blog about it). But to actually talk to someone I knew back when it wasn’t cool and see the change has affected my past as well really drove it home.

I game. And that makes me cool, right? Right.