Broken Frontier

In the world of popular culture, things seem to change by the day. What was fashionable last week is as good as retro the next, so keeping your finger on the Access Hollywood/Inside Edition pulse is the only way to stay up-to-date on current and future happenings. But when social mutations seem to occur on a daily basis, it’s comforting to know that some things… whether you like those things or not, never change.

I recently attended my ten year high school reunion and what I found both eased and nauseated my butterfly-ridden stomach at the same time. While change surrounded me in every corner of my life, here at the recently renovated suburban bar which housed the graduating class of 1997, change was a relative term.

I don’t know what I expected going in, though a cluster fuck must have been a serious option I had considered seeing the amount of booze I consumed beforehand. I suppose in a select few cubbyholes of my mind I anticipated a metamorphous in my fellow peers… a certain sense of adulthood that would clamp down on them as they ventured into their late 20’s and early 30’s. But that’s not what I found.

No, to my not so surprise, the douche bags remained douche bags, the pot heads remained pot heads, and the antisocial kids remained antisocial by not showing up at all. While no one there listened to Third Eye Blind, watched Friends, or wore retro bowling shirts any longer, somehow they managed to defeat the act of getting older and growing as a person.

However, the funny part of it all is… numerous times throughout the night people commented on my own group of friends, rolling their eyes when we’d do something stupid or sighing when we’d say something ridiculous, only to respond with, “I guess some things never change.”

Had I too not grown as a person? Had I swatted away my own internal evolution? Had I refused to admit to myself that I was the same Jason M. Burns as I was ten years ago?

These were all questions that plagued my mind as I downed my eighth or ninth mixed drink. Sober, I’m quite confident that I am who I am… an adult American male who has transitioned from awkward teenager to a not so awkward, three decade old, comic book writer. Buzzed and inebriated however, I found myself questioning the grownup I had become, only to come to a profound realization.

We are who we are given our surroundings. The fact is, maturity is hurled out the window at high speeds when we’re dropped into an environment of adolescence. At first there is reminiscing about the “good times,” and then before you know it, retrospect becomes a need to make new memories. Ten minutes later… you’re dancing on a pool table and in the background you hear, “Some things never change.”

While I dismissed the majority of my former fellow classmates for being the same people they were ten years prior, I found comfort in knowing that those who I called friends were still the same whacky, distinct personalities who I found myself drawn to growing up. In the company of each other, we could become our once younger and more naïve selves, tossing the cold slap of reality aside for one night. By trading in adulthood for sophomoric laughs, we bested time the only way possible… by forgetting it had moved forward at all.

And as I woke in the morning, nursing a headache from a full night of drinking, I smiled. Not at the jokes that were told. Not at the anecdotes that were revisited. Not even at the physical growth of some of our once most sought after alumni. No, I found entertainment in the most rewarding of places.

The douche bags were still douche bags.