Who Says You Can't Go Home?

This weekend I was in my hometown visiting my parents and sister while my beloved drank his way across Columbus.  At first, I thought I wouldn't go out with Sister Little, because how pathetic is it to go to someone else's ten-year-reunion festivities?  Especially when that person is three years younger than you are?  Pretty pathetic.

And pretty fun.

So Friday night, I allowed her to drag me first to the local bowling alley. The bar attached to the bowling alley is a major local watering hole.  First, you can buy mixed drinks for $2.  Sure, they're made with such fun liquors as Popov Vodka, but they are cheap and they get you mind-blowingly drunk in a scarily short amount of time.  We went into the beer garden, specially erected for the big Homecoming weekend (you who have not been to my hometown for homecoming will just NOT UNDERSTAND - they actually close every business in town at noon on Friday so the entire town can go to the parade and the football game). 

I ended up talking to a girl from my class who has three children. The oldest child, I learned at my own ten-year reunion, is obsessed with vacuum cleaners.  So much that he wanted a vacuum for his birthday.  I asked about this child, and she said she'd actually gotten calls from the Jimmy Kimmel show for her child to come on out and talk about his love for vacuums.  Then she told me that this child is now six.  It is still insane to me that my peers have six-year-old children.  I drank some more.

Then I wandered over to a group of girls in the class below me.  By this point, I was sort of tipsy, so I managed to forget that one of the girls I was talking to not only went to my college but was in my sorority.  Nice, eh?  She was four months pregnant and not amused by my ineptitude.  At this point, Sister Little decided it was time to move on to the requisite party in a cornfield.

We got in the car with one of my sister's breastfeeding friends (always look for the pregnant and breastfeeding when you're drunk and needing a ride) and drove seven miles out of town to a random housing development backed up to a cornfield.  We saw a huge steel building, a house, and a stage.  Yes, a stage.  There was actually a cover band out there in the middle of nowhere playing glam rock from the '80s and a little John Cougar. 

Sister Little proceeded to get hammered (it is your right at your ten-year to do so) while I chatted up a bunch of her friends. I was sobering up, since Sister Little kept stealing the bottle of wine we'd dragged out to the cornfield to drink out of plastic cups (I hate beer, and she'd already drank all hers).  The night was capped off for me by seeing a 30-year-old man walking around in a Redneck University t-shirt, complete with Dixie flag, brandishing a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Ah, the memories.