Andrea Wachner, like many other people, was dreading her high school reunion, so she decided to have some fun and
hire a stripper to impersonate her. Wachner, a freelance comedy writer, made a documentary about it called, "I Remember Andrea." Some of her classmates didn't think the prank/film was funny, and when she posted clips on YouTube from her 40-minute documentary, there was an outcry from '95 alums. "There's definitely a contingency of people who hate me because of this," she said, adding, "I can't think of one thing you could do there where you weren't competing against hundreds of other kids. I didn't really relate to a lot of what the others accepted as the norm, and I was OK with that — it just didn't make it great. Most of the girls I knew had eating disorders. A huge percentage. I'm not scarred by it. It wasn't torture. It was not a miserable experience. But I think high school in and of itself is kind of awful."
Good Idea (Score:1)
I think I'll hire an engineering geek to impersonate me at my high school reunion.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
Would the real Andrea please stand up.... (Score:2)
I think the real Andrea was much cuter. Actually, much more like me. Too bad I never met her while I was out there, I think we'd actually have been good friends.
I just went reading around a little bit. You can read a little about her on her site. [ihateselfpromotion.com]
I sympathize totally with her. I can count the people that know me from high school on one hand. But, folks have been coming out of the wood work that didn't have two words to say to me for all the years I was in sch
Re: (Score:2)
It could have made it more convincing if her "boyfriend" was there to reinforce the con. err, I mean stunt. err, I mean social experiment.
And the "boyfriend" would have to be a male stripper who's hung like a donkey...
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's usually referred to as hung like a horse, so I guess I qualify.
But hey, it's too late now.
Re: (Score:2)
I was the ultimate undiagnosed Asperger's geek in high school. Now as a diagnosed Asperger's geek with some social networking skills, I'm heading up the committee for the 20th reunion. Crazy. And amazing how badly the person who "kinda wanted to help", a social butterfly from high school, can't handle the task I've given her to do the missing classmates search.
School Reunions are stupid (Score:2)
We go to school because we have to. Do we really need to meet those suckers again?
Re: (Score:1)
Not everyone has cut all communications / interest with people from high school. Personally I'd like to see a select few people and find out what happened. It wasn't by choice that I lost contact with some people.
Re: (Score:2)
I went along with my transgendered friend who got the op just after leaving - most people had /heard/ but very very few had ever /seen/ - she was my date for the evening. We'd both done well for ourselves in live: she'd run her own company and now conducted research on plant tobacco mosaic virus, and I'd just completed my PhD in aerial robotics.
PV Peninsula. Oh dear God. (Score:3, Interesting)
PV Peninsula! No wonder she hated the place.
I did school photography for a while, and PV Peninsula was one of my assignments. While they gave us lots of space to work and lots of parental assistance (more like chaperonage), the kids were a bunch of fucking snobs. The parents wouldn't lift a finger to move any gear (even if it meant they'd get out the door quicker), that's just "not what they do". I won't say it was awful. Nobody got assaulted or anything, there were no pile-ups in the parking lot, and nobody accused any of us of doing anything improper. I did fuck up my knee, but that could have happened at any school. But I contrast this with the job at Dorsey high school.
Dorsey is not known for being in a particularly good neighborhood, and we sorta got corralled into a tiny space where there was only room for three camera rigs at a time (as opposed to the eight we were using at Peninsula). But the kids were nice, the parents were not "above" moving a piece of gear now and then, or even helping us load our cars after the shoot, and they made a point of seeing to it that we got lunch. Some of us were not too pleased to be assigned to Dorsey, and took the job with reservations. Then we got there, and everything went so well that every member of the crew said "send us back tomorrow".
It took me a while, but I realized the difference. The Peninsula kids are there trying to live up to their parents' inflated expectations. Most of them are not particularly happy. The kids at Dorsey, on the other hand, have lots of opportunity to get themselves in trouble, but they don't. They're in school because they WANT to be. And that makes all the difference.