Buffy The Vampire Slayer

10 Years On

10 years ago this week, an ex-cheerleader kissed a dead guy.

Can you believe it? The kiss that launched a thousand scripts happened 3,650 days ago (which WGP™ says is equal to the number of Spuffy stories posted on the web this week.)

10 years is a big damn deal, yo.

(Did you know that the 10th Year Anniversary is the "Tinfoil Anniversary?" I shudder to think of the implications : "Happy Anniversary, baby! Well, yeah. It is a leftover sandwich...but see? It’s wrapped in tinfoil! That means I love you! Baby? Sweetheart?")

The only formal "10th anniversary event" I’ve experienced is my high school reunion (which I did not attend.) I’m still in touch with my best high school friends, but as time goes by, they remind me of Law & Order. You know, when Briscoe patiently interviews a group of eyewitnesses to a crime and they ID the perp as simultaneously a fat guy with a hat, a chinese woman with one leg and a cone-shaped robot?

My buddies have become like this when recalling our school days (except for the part about the robot - there is no denying that.) Over time, their memories have acquired this... Spielbergian golden glow? - while mine are more...I don’t know, Ed Wood channeling Werner Herzog.

It is part of nostalgia I guess - to elide things that don’t fit with what we want to remember and to pine for things that never where. This got me to thinking (as too many things do) about Buffy.

Sunnydale was a town with a similarly cheery view on things. While their legendary denial was a subject for humor, exasperation or conspiracy theory, I think it might have been necessary. Their only other option was to somehow live under the terrible weight of knowing they were nothing more than whimpering meat to the hungry hunters waiting in the dark. (I am still haunted by the world of "The Wish.")

Time and again, the non-supernatural citizens of Sunnydale would paper over each event so that they could bring it in line with their own view of an ordered world, one where Happy Meals©®™ most emphatically do not have legs. One where anything out of place could be explained away and then forgotten.

This year, the class of ’99 would just be starting their planning for the 10th Anniversary Razorback Reunion. Most of them have probably moved on with their lives, but might sometimes look back with warmth - remembering what they want, and forgetting the rest, except perhaps the dead.

Got your own thoughts on the Class of ’99? Share the love...but hang on to the tinfoil.