Girlyousatnexttoin11thgradeEnglish (4:20 PM): OMG KELLEY, how HAVE you been? I haven’t seen you in 4 ever! Call me girl 🙂

Ahhh(!) … it’s the attack of the girl that you sat next to in 11th grade English class with Mrs. Benton, who, for some unknown reason, tries tirelessly to keep in contact with me through pointless and random AIM messages.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about keeping amicable relationships with the people I spent a good 13 years of my life with, but in large part I honestly don’t know what the hell to talk to them about. Should I ask her how many guys, or, hell, how many girls, she has made out with in the last two years? How many drunken nights she’s had to be carried to her dorm by her roommate? How about if she has been slapped in the face with the reality that although she was Prom Queen in high school, it doesn’t mean she can walk on water? I mean, the only in-depth conversation I had with her in 11th grade English concerned the symbolism of the color green in a required reading of Fiztgerald. So where does one go from that after two long years?

I guess I could just avoid being a bitch and play along and have a little fun in the process. In the end, we all know that she is just searching for more dirt on me to share than Facebook could possibly provide. I’ll tell her that I’m doing great. Let her know that while I’m not tackling a 25-credit semester, I am off exploring the museums and other cultural highlights of Binghamton (ha!). On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, I’m volunteering at the local animal shelter, and if I’m not fighting the global war on poverty, I keep Thursday and Friday mornings open to have conference calls with the college president to go over any concerns that I have on the morale of the student body. Saturday and Sunday evenings, I become a little bit of a slacker and I only sign myself up for one or two fundraisers to support a cure for cancer. I’ll tell her I plan on becoming more active next semester, when I’m only taking 21 credits.

Girl-you-sat-next-to-in-11th-grade-English will undoubtedly reply with a “lol” followed by a “hey, that’s cool, but I gotta get going … c u @ Thanksgiving!” and I will go back to napping in my comfy bed for the third day in a row.

As I sit on my bed and stuff my face with tortilla chips and salsa, I consider if I really will end up seeing her at Thanksgiving, but I decide that it’s highly unlikely. Then I think that maybe I’ll meet up with her in three years at my first high school reunion, but I won’t make a point of it, unless I’ve heard she’s gotten really fat, ugly or unfashionable, and then I’ll go out of my way to chat with her. We can talk for hours about how cool it was when we wrote that paper about the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock in “The Great Gatsby,” or when we had a vocabulary test and she copied off my paper because she hadn’t studied or about the time she made me do our whole “group” project because she was too busy dry-humping her new meathead boyfriend to find time to meet me after school to work on it.

After that sentimental chat we will say our goodbyes and embrace each other in fake and mechanical hugs, and then I’ll proceed to watch her get plastered at the wet bar until she eventually gets on the dance floor and grinds with her Kevin Federline-looking husband, boyfriend or random member of the house tribute band.

So yeah, I guess I can put her name on the “continue talking to after high school because you might be able to laugh at someday” list that sits right next to the “continue talking to after high school because they might become the next Bill Gates and get me a lot of bling bling someday” list.

Hey, it could be worse; she could be on the “continue to talk to in order to remain off their hit list” list, although my name will probably go on her hit list if she ever reads this article.

Oops.