Today was an Oakridge party. 99 times out of 100 I'll avoid an Oakridge party at all costs, but this one was different. It was the final choir party of all time. Mr. Ice, my thoroughly awesome high school director, made this previous year his last and called it quits after 25 years teaching for Oakridge since the school opened back in '79. This party was a gathering of all his favorite alumni from over the years - an invite-only affair. He only invited like 3 faculty members and I saw just that many: Mrs. Jones (who absolutely everyone from Oakridge knows), a retired English teacher and a coach who doubled as an IT admin.
But Mr. Ice certainly picked the right place to throw his party. The family of a really good singer who was a freshman when I was a senior has a multi-million dollar house in Hampden Woods (think Aroon's part of town, but even more upscale, if that's possible). And whoa. I knew I went to school with rich kids, but damn. There was a valet service, so I even got to bust out the valet key sitting in my wallet and hand it over to them.
Now, I'll make no bones about it, I'm quite a bit young at 19 to be driving a BMW. At this party, however, that was the norm. Some of the first people I ran into were my little adopted freshmen from my senior year, two girls named Ashley and Jenny. One had turned 16, and the other was enjoying her 15th birthday. The 16-year-old owns a G35 and the 15-year-old is already in possession of an automatic RX-8. Insanely rich kids.
A lot of people turned up for this party; it was kind of like a quickie run down memory lane for my whole high school choir career. I was the only one from my class who showed (although my co-president, Claire, hopefully showed up earlier than I had and just left early), but several friends from the class above me were in attendance. Dane, crazy old Dane, had gotten several gigs off-Broadway in New York and was set to leave tomorrow. Katy, who had always found the weirdest, most awkward times to hit on me, was engaged. The ever-outgoing Monica, who I had seen the night before, was there for a little while to say hi, and I at last met the interesting characters who were her parents. She too is headed to New York to keep pursuing her acting career. They weren't far off from what I had imagined. And what made me really happy was Lucy! Lucy was a chick who adopted me as a freshman when I was a senior, and I always had thought she turned out to be really cool. Four years later, we finally exchange IM names so we can keep tabs on one another. But being the boy who's freshly home from college, I found myself being interviewed mostly by parents of my choirmates:
"Yes, I'm at UT ... I'm in Plan II ... yeah, nobody knows what it is ... thinking about Spanish and Japanese ... oh sure, I'll call your brother-in-law if I find myself stranded near [Baja/Tokyo/Mallorca] in the midst of my immersion ..."
But, this being a house party full of millionaires, those parents threw a couple surprises my way. When I mentioned to one couple that I'm intrigued by doing translation for Nintendo, the father offered to put me in touch with a higher-up at Electronic Arts about translating American games into Japanese. I instantly thought of my mom's family friend, who is a higher-up at EA, and in the same department at this guy. When telling my mom about it, she suspected that this family knew her friend's boss. Just one more connection into the industry - and that's always a happy occasion.
All in all, two hours in the house had opened a lot of doors for my life: a new friendship with an old friend and a possible future career in my ideal industry is a lot of luck for one day. On the way out, I was repulsed with myself for carrying the scent of some 30 perfumes. I instantly hopped in the shower when I got home to wash that off, and with it I washed off the shame and embarrassment: I had just then realized that not only did I forget to pick up dog treats on the way home, but I forgot to tip the valet too.
Maybe this whole rich and famous thing isn't for me. But that type of people certainly can be interesting.
