This piece might just be too didactic to be enjoyable (as it occasionally exaggerates and over-states to make its point), but that's a chance I'll take. While I've occasionally taken a stab at the 'confessional poetry' genre, a-là Sylvia Plath and a few others, I've just never been able to get a worthwhile handle on that technique, as I tend to veer off into the ditches of didactic screeds, or lamenting Jeremiads along the way. This was yet another attempt that also crashed into the ditch along the way. Nevertheless, I sometimes keep some of those attempts, just because they're cute little freak-babies, sort of like Sloth from The Goonies.

With regards to this one: I've been invited to several High School reunions over the years, and have always, steadfastly refused to go. The main reason is that I can't think of so much as a single person from my High School years that I actually want to spend any time around, whether it be the ones that despised me, and want to try and express bogus and insincere 'regret', or those, who would like nothing more than another kick at the can, and also to see their long-held viewpoints 'vindicated'.

The particular person, who inspired this piece, was a 'mean girl' in my High School who had it down to such a toxic, red-painted talons refined art, that she could make other mean girls run away crying. She recently spoke to someone that I knew, who had off-handedly mentioned my name in the context of our cohort being old enough for mid-life crisis now. As soon as she heard my name, she made the remark: 'Well, I would think that to have a mid-life crisis, you need to have an actual life first, don't you?

You get the picture.