Who's rich, dead or in jail?

DENVER AIRPORT — Last month, I googled a few of my high school classmates — people I knew long before the invention of googling, and for that matter before the Internet or triple-bladed razors.
I would have googled more of them, but I could recall only about a dozen names, and half of those turn out to have been characters in sketches by the original cast of “Saturday Night Live.”
But what can you expect? Guys at my advanced age deserve credit if we remember to shave at all.
For this weekend I will attend our 25-year class reunion, assuming I remembered the correct graduation year. Anyway, I got an invitation, which left me no way to deny that I am now, as who should say, something more than 30 years old.
At least I won’t have to endure childish comparisons of success and be humiliated by some former nerd we called “Weasel” who arrives in a chauffeur-driven limo with its own Starbuck’s. That’s because I went to a little school in a remote corner of Michigan from which students disperse to the four winds immediately after graduation to advance forward into the future that’s ahead of them. I expect little competition for hors d’oeuvres at the reception.
So now those futures are behind us. We can look back at living through an era of new technological wonders from touchtone phones to curved toothbrushes that overshadow even Gilette’s multi-bladed marvels.
OK, this whole reunion trip is mostly an excuse to go someplace where “spring” does not mean highs in the mid-30s with rain turning to snow toward evening, and where I can rent a sailboat without worrying where to stow a survival suit.
But I do look forward to the classroom visit part of the reunion festivities, when the school’s current students get to meet us oldtimers. I’ve put some work into the sage advice I assume they’re eager to hear and certain to follow. Although, I understand advice is now called “talking points” and high schoolers won’t notice them unless they come texted on a cell phone.
I will warn them to stay away from the two most pernicious temptations facing today’s youth: drugs and college, only one of which I was smart enough to avoid.
Maybe the students won’t care, and I sure don’t recollect what the visiting alumni told me a quarter century ago. Those crazy geezers were old, gray, out of touch, and probably still used straight toothbrushes.
This year’s graduates have never known a world without a weak dollar, and likely will think nothing of shaving with a quintuple-bladed razors. Thanks to gene replacement rejuvenation therapy, they won’t even be old and gray for their 25-year reunions.
But I bet their children will make fun of them for lugging around those clunky MP50 players instead of just downloading everything onto their brain implants.
Drew Herman is the Kodiak Daily Mirror assistant editor. Read past “Out of the Loop” columns at www.sputvalvo.blogspot.com.