It's All Good

Well, blogger friends, I am sitting here at my computer this morning thinking, "where do I start." My high school reunion was "interesting" to say the least, but saying "successful" might be saying too much. Friday afternoon after sitting up the hospitality suite, I found five or so old Coyote football players in the bar having a beer. These guys were not high society, they were neighborhood/country boys – a little on the rough side – good ol’ boys. I sat down with them for a while and enjoyed myself laughing at their stories. The waitress told us that the couple at a nearby table was also with the reunion. The guys made me go over and find out who they were – none of us recognized either person. After introducing myself, the man said introduced himself saying, "I’m Mike S." I replied, "You don’t look like Mike S." He said, "I don’t know any of you people either." But as everyone started calling out their name, recognition was made and the good times started rolling. I went and got name tags.

The party moved to the hospitality suite where we could bring in our own food and drinks. It was not a large room, but we soon filled it up. I was amazed at the turn out on Friday, but glad to see people. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, but late in the evening there was a disruption of sorts. One of the good ol’ boys, who has had a rough life with drugs and such, drank too much, and started a fight. Being a drunk, it was not much of a fight and was over before it began. He threw a punch, the other guy, who was totally taken by surprise, kicked him in the chest (karate style), the old Coyotes drug him off, and took him home - end of fight. Everyone went back to visiting – all was good. At the end of the evening Toby and I were left with the same crowd I started with in the bar. Toby and I said good night to the boys and left them to party in the suite by themselves. As we walked to our room discussing the evening and events and people, Toby said, "No wonder you snapped me up so quickly." I laughed all the way to the room.

All went well on Saturday with lots of visiting and a tour through the old high school. A group of us gathered to decorate the ballroom, which is always a fun time. But this time, someone moved a table and the hotel catering lady, Brenda, got in a tizzy and chewed us out telling us not to move any furniture without asking her first. For someone who is in sales and catering, I thought she did not handle people very well and was certainly not accommodating, and certainly over-reacted. Although she ruined my afternoon, I tried to be understanding – maybe she was going through menopause or had a brain tumor or something.

That evening, we got all gussied up and went to the dance in the ballroom. We had about a hundred people gathered, visiting and dancing. It was really a quiet group. Mostly, people were catching up with each other’s lives. It seemed like all was well. And then suddenly it was not. Brenda, the hotel catering lady, was standing in front of me yelling and shaking her finger at me saying, "I am closing you down! Get these people out of here!" Then she got really ugly and stupid. Long story short – one of the men had asked if he and some others could take left over food from the ballroom up to the suite. Brenda told him that he could not - due to health laws. He argued with her and said he had called her boss who had given permission to take the left over food to the suite. Apparently the argument escalated to Brenda saying, "I can shut you down!" and him saying, "Go ahead!" She acted very unprofessional at that point. She was over the edge mad. She had most of the food carted off and then set up her workers to "guard" the rest of the food – not letting anyone else eat (like they would want to eat after her scene) while she agreed to talk to me privately in her office. After I let her rant and rave and have her say, I thanked her for all she had done for us. Then very nicely, I told her that it was really not okay that she was shutting our reunion down because of one person while the other 99 were oblivious to what was going on. At that point I was ready pack up and leave, but she sort of came to her senses and said she would tell everyone they could stay. Most were gone by the time we got back to the ballroom, but she made a little speech explaining everything – how it was all our fault and she had tried to do everything she could for us, but we could stay as long as we wanted. What was left of the party visited while we took down the decorations, but the party was over. Toby and I checked on the hospitality suite before we went back to our room. There was a room full of people sitting around quietly visiting and laughing, but all was good once more. They teased me for "checking in on them" calling me "Mother". Toby and I went to bed about midnight.

We made coffee and had doughnuts in the hospitality suite the next morning, talked about events of the night, discussed upcoming reunions, said our good-byes, and it was over. Yeha! I will never attend another function at the Remington Inn in Wichita Falls. Although things could have worked out better, how many people can say they were kicked out of their 30th high school reunion?