How to Simulate Your Ten Year Reunion at Home
Due to Covid-19 and the rising threat of murder hornets, I, your student body president, regret to inform you that our ten-year reunion has been canceled. But fear not, I have compiled a list of the five dumbest conversations you would have gotten into at the reunion, as well as provided instructions for how to create the same emotional reaction safely from home.
- “No, it’s not a pyramid scheme. It’s an online business, hon, which allows me to work from home and to spend all my time with my kids. Our logo looks like a pyramid, but that is actually a single mountain peak. Think of multilevel marketing like climbing a mountain. It’s a lot of work, but it will feel so good when you make it to the top.”
To create how you would feel in this conversation:
Fill a crockpot with essential oils. As the oils are warming up, watch the Goop documentary. When the oils have penetrated the atmosphere in your home, making your eyes burn, and your skin tingle, begin to browse WebMD from your phone.
- “So are you still doing the whole writer thing?”
To create how you would feel in this conversation:
Go to the Facebook page of that mother who posts anti-college sentiments every day, and who has three adult children (also, proudly anti-college) still living at home. Scroll until you find four consecutive statuses without spelling errors, then burn every book in your house that isn’t a cookbook or written by a celebrity.
- “Of course I remember you! I was homecoming queen after all, and a queen always remembers her subjects. I’m just kidding. Not about homecoming queen. I was homecoming queen, and also cheerleading captain, and student vice president, remember? Remember that great halftime show our senior year?”
To create how you would feel in this conversation:
Buy a prom dress off Amazon that you know won’t look good on you. The best dresses for this purpose are usually Photoshopped onto the models, who should be mostly Photoshop themselves. Pay extra for overnight shipping. Livestream yourself trying on the dress. Don’t turn off comments. Don’t log off when you start to cry. Refer to yourself as an “influencer” when your mother calls to check-in.
- “It’s the cellphone towers that are killing the bees. Did you ever hear about dead bees before cellphones? Now that we have 5G, they will all be dead within the year. Bee genocide.”
To create how you would feel in this conversation:
Get drunk exclusively from moonshine. Find a child (if a child is not readily available a flat-earther will do) and argue about the color of the sky. It doesn’t matter which stance you take, they will take the opposite. Apologize before the argument gets too heated. Watch Donnie Darko together. Pretend it is your first time seeing it. Agree with their analysis.
- “So are you single?”
To create how you would feel in this conversation:
Watch eight consecutive hours of 90 Day Fiancé. The reunion specials will produce the most pungent results. Afterward reflect on the value of eight hours: an entire workday, a flight from New York to Iceland, the amount of time a student council president would spend on the phone to plan a (now canceled)ten-year reunion because the vice president was too busy Instagram modeling to lift a finger.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Nicole Hebdon’s fiction has been published in The Kenyon Review, The New Haven Review, The Southampton Review, The New Ohio Review, and the Antigonish Review among other places.
