What Am I, Chopped Liver?

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, August 3, 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post 

Some guys from my high school are getting together for a
reunion next weekend. It's in the Catskills, a famous dowager
resort area where people go to laugh, have a good time and eat
like starving dogs at a slaughterhouse. In the Catskills, room
rates tend to include all the food you can eat, and people who
go to the Catskills tend to be budget-conscious. The results are
not pretty. 

People will spend 10 to 12 hours a day in the dining hall, face
down, fastened to their chairs like Chief Pontiac's head on the
hood of a 1951 Catalina. The only thing you can see moving
are mouths and silverware.

In the Catskills, when people say they ate a "light dinner," it
means they went to the dining hall before sundown. In the
Catskills, there's enough cholesterol in each appetizer to clog a
major artery -- such as the George Washington Parkway. In
the Catskills, the food is so rich it has to hire bodyguards.
(Whaddaya mean, I should stop with the one-liners already?
These are the Catskills. This is where corned-beef comics like
Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett and Jerry Lewis got started.
They were wise-guy waiters. A guest would inquire, "Do you
have matzoh balls?" And Danny Kaye would say, "No, I just
walk this way.")

Anyway, it's a reunion of about 30 guys from my high school.
Just guys. No wives. No girls from the class. It's a
Middle-Aged Men Behaving Badly weekend. Not too badly,
you understand, because we're almost 50, and those days of
sex, drugs and rock-and-roll are behind us. The most daring
thing most of us do now, drug-wise, is forget to take Pepcid
AC before meals. As for sex, I check "male" on the form and
move on to height and weight. I do still like rock-and-roll; I
think of myself as one funky head-banging wild-man hipster.
On air guitar, I play "Ferry Cross the Mersey."

It wasn't my idea to disallow women, but I agree with it. Some
of the girls from our class are grandmothers now, and that's too
radical to deal with. I mean, let's say that for the last 30 years
you've fantasized about having a frank and thoughtful
discussion about the Louisiana Purchase with Carla
Gartenwasser in, um, the reclining back seat of a Plymouth
Valiant station wagon. What do you think it would do to the
moment if some 4-year-old opened the tailgate and said,
"Grandma, I need a drink of water"?

The last reunion we had, six years ago, we had men and
women. We were just beginning to go to seed then. But there
was this one woman, a total lights-out babe, who stood out like
gravy on ice cream. She had on a sheer black sheer blouse, a
pair of jeans she was poured into, and stiletto heels. The skin
on her face was so tight you could type a resume on it. She
was ravishing, straight out of a Jacqueline Susann novel.
Nobody recognized her. At first we thought she was some
classmate's trophy wife, but nobody recognized the guy she
was with either. It turned out she was from our class, and the
guy she was with was her husband, a plastic surgeon, and she
was his business card. Nobody recognized her because of all
the work she'd had done.

When word of her identity spread through the room, my friend
Eddie, who'd dated her in high school, went over to talk with
her, and confirmed who she was after a brief conversation. "It's
her," Eddie said. "I recognized her from the long gaps in our
conversation. She has the IQ of a pie plate."

It was Eddie's idea to have this year's reunion. He called me
about a month ago.

"What are you looking for most in a place to go?" he asked.

"A bathroom I don't have to share with my children," I said.

The survey says that was the No. 1 answer.

No. 2 was: "Menus with large type."

It was Eddie's idea to have just guys, too. To save money
we're doubling up, two to a room. It's been a long time since
I've said, "Hey, stop hogging all the blankets, Lloyd."

I have to say, I am generally suspicious of reunions. The older
you get, the fewer people show up. By the 10th-year reunion
all the fat people are weeded out. By the 20th, all the people
whose businesses or marriages failed are out. By the 30th,
you're down to a select group of lions who think they've done
well and have egos the size of two-car garages -- them, and a
few schlubs who figure that the field has been pared down so
it's safe to appear. This results in embarrassing moments,
particularly during Meet and Greet: 

"Hi, Rodney Wigglesworth, Class of '68, United States
Ambassador to Greece."

"Yo. Wally Pemphigus, Class of '67. Resident of a halfway
house in Dundalk, Maryland, and I am currently a student at
the DeVry Institute planning a career in textile laundering."

By the 40th-year reunion, people are already starting to die. By
the 50th, most of the people in your class have forgotten where
they went to high school, so even the ones who are alive don't
show up.

Eddie said the idea is that we're going to play sports together
during the day, then eat and drink at night -- and go to bed real
late, maybe even after the 10 o'clock news! Tennis was
mentioned, and softball.

"I like to play golf, because I have a better chance of hitting a
ball that's not moving," I said. "What do the other guys want to
play?"

"Some of the guys want to play basketball," Eddie said.

"Then you'd better make sure Paul is coming," I said.

"Why?"

"Because he's an orthopedic surgeon, and this is going to be his
big weekend." 

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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