There’s nothing like a high school reunion for dredging up insecurities. You want to go back looking like this:

Not like this:

ursula (Photo credit: theMaykazine)

Or like this:

Cary Grant (Photo credit: twm1340)

But certainly not like this:

Português: Retrato por Repin, 1881 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I went to my high school reunion a few Saturdays ago. (It was that same Saturday I wrote about here). As soon as the last soccer game of the day was done, my kids and I hopped into the car and drove to my parents’ house in Arlington. We arrived not long before I was  supposed to pick up my dear friend with whom I always go to these reunions…

When I walked in the door, my mom and dad looked at me aghast.

“What happened to your face?!” my mom asked with real concern.

Those are precisely the words you want to hear fifteen minutes before your high school reunion.

I ran to the bathroom to see what she was talking about and was almost blinded by the neon red glow that was reflecting off the mirror. I looked like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, if you can imagine how he’d look after being dipped in a vat of acid. I’d worn a hat at both soccer games, but still managed to get broiled to a violently red hue.

But there was still hope. I industriously spackled my face with cover up and then paused at last to inspect my work in the mirror. All in all, I was feeling pretty good about the way I had managed to salvage the situation.

The kids were at the table eating their dinner when I emerged from the bathroom, with a little hard-earned swagger in my step.

“I look o.k., right?” I asked them.

My very sweet ten year old son looked at me in silence for a few long moments before he broke it to me as gently as he could: “Well…You look almost normal.”

Almost normal?

Good enough for me.