It’s been a week or so since we filmed the Real World 20th Awards Bash in LA, and I know I have to discipline myself and just write about it. It’s hard to write about the reunion because there is so much about the past that I have to explain before I can talk about the present. And who really wants to spend hours writing about the past?

Plus, it’s hard to write about something that could potentially be so juicy. If chose to write about my day-to-day dramas over the past 5 years, it would read like a transcript of This Old House. Here I have a rare chance to write about something like a Hollywood insider, but there’s nothing more exhausting than writing a play-by-play of the night’s drama. Plus, these people are my friends, and it’s not right to exploit them so I can get a few thousand more visits on my website.

Now I’m just going to type and see what I can come up with…

Real World Reunion vs. High School Class Reunion

A Real World reunion is essentially a high school class reunion except a little more complicated. My theory is that there are 4 Stages you go through on your path to your first class reunion.

–Actually, before I write any more, I should say that nobody likes to admit this stuff, much less write about this one their website. We were all fragile in our passage through high school, and it’s hard to feel cool by stepping back and analyzing that part of your life. It’s much easier to be confident as an adult and act like high school wasn’t that big of a deal.–

But I’m in Stage 4, so I don’t mind writing about the subject…

  • Stage 1: Get me out of here! This begins in your last years of high school or shortly after you graduate. This stage is entirely a reaction to the self-absorbed kids who act like the social ordeals of high school are the biggest thing in the world. You cannot handle the ugliness of cliques and the silly games of popularity. You believe that you belong somewhere else where you will thrive. I would never come back here for a reunion! Why would I want to relive this at a reunion?
  • Stage 2: This is why I’m hot.* This stage begins a couple years after you graduate when you have accomplished things as your own person. You’ve got new, cooler friends who understand you more.** You still replay those social games of high school in your head, except insert your new self into those same situations because you now have the upper hand. Although there’s a big desire to go back and show “them” what who you’ve become at a class reunion, it’s a greater temptation to ditch the whole event because your too cool. The hope is that your absence will add to your mystique.
  • Stage 3: What’s going on here? After you graduate college you promptly get hammered by grown-up realities of jobs, dating, bills, traveling, etc. You are too busy to mull over high school. Years pass.
  • Stage 4: Let’s get along. You realize that you have more in common with your high school classmates than you ever would’ve imagined: you grew up together. A reunion is something you don’t want to miss. You’ve been through enough real-life trial to understand that the spats you had in high school were trivial. A reunion gives people a chance to reconcile with others and make peace with their past. In a bizarre twist, these old classmates become your new best friends.

*Stage 2 is when 90% of rap songs are written and recorded. These guys in their early 20s have a microphone that allows them itemize their success (in no vague terms) for all their peers to hear. For more information, listen to all rap released since Puffy recorded “Mo Money Mo Problems.”

** By default, everyone upgrades to “new cooler friends” after high school because your age group is growing up and maturing. The irony here is that your new cool friends might be the “them” that someone else loathes from high school.

My So Called Life***

I know these stages because I passed through all four stages for three times. I went to my first high school as a freshman, and then spent my sophomore and junior years my second high school. I left that school my senior year to be a full-time student at a local college. So my “high school memories” were spread over three campuses with three unique groups of peers.

Everyone is different. Some people will be in Stage 1 and never come to a reunion. Some people may sit in Stage 2 way too long. These are the girls who get plastic surgery in time for their 20th reunion, or the guy who leases a Porsche three weeks before his 10th reunion. You have to wonder if some people hit Stage 3 and become so overwhelmed by the trials of life that you’ll never see them again.

Me? I arrived at Stage 4 when I turned 22. By then I had been through the big dramas of being on a reality show, and I looked back at my teenager years with friends as a blissfully simple time. In part 2 I’ll write about the new drama.

*** “My So Called Life” is a reference to the short-lived teen drama in the 1990s starring the young Claire Danes. Her crush on the show was a hunky Jared Catalano played by the actor Jared Leto, who is now the lead singer of 30 Seconds to Mars, a reasonably successful rock band. If they handed out awards for 1990s people who’ve done pretty well doing something new, Jared Leto would get 2nd place. Billy Ray Cyrus wins 1st by a landslide.