Looking Back on Reunions

Over the past 25 years, I’ve been to literally dozens of reunions. There have been work related reunions, High School reunions, College reunions. Hell, even funerals these days are reunions by another name.

But clearly, here in America, we place great weight on our high school and college reunions. Having recently attended one of each, and having attended widely divergent schools for high school and then college, I thought I would share some observations.

First off, nothing ever really changes.

Remember the beautiful but distant girl who would never talk to you, dated guys much cooler than you, and then disappeared. Well, she still won’t talk to you, and even with nametags, the silence suggests she doesn’t even remember you. That is if she even bothers to attend. (Girls, replace girl with guy. You get it.)

Remember the person who was a bore back then. Well, they’re even more boring now. Which means they try to take even more of your time. Which makes the, ‘excuse me, I see the canapés are being handed out on the other side of the room, I better go’ line that much harder to employ.

Secondly, not all of us look as lean and lithe as we did way back when. From high school, the cool guys really didn’t turn out all that well. They’ve gained the most weight, have the least interesting jobs, and don’t speak that highly of their exes. From college, the cool guys made the most money, date supermodels, don’t care any more about their exes, and travel regularly.

So Porsches trump Camaros, but I suppose we always knew that.

Third, nobody plays sports anymore, regardless of their level of activity in their youth. Sure, there are weekend duffers, and yoga devotees, but with one or two exceptions, mostly for solo sports like bicycling and running, physical competition has long since left the building.

And the most telling point, particularly with regard to nothing really changes, is that whatever you were back in high school, with rare exceptions, you still are today, 30 years later.

For example, those at the top of the graduating class still remember the order rank for themselves and their classmates, and click it off like they are running down the states that went from Democrat to Republican in the mid-term election. Hey, it’s been 30 years. You’ve graduated from a fucking Ivy League school, have 2.5 kids, a home in the Westchester suburbs, and still this shit matters to you. Gimme a break. Why do you need to reinforce this, particularly among the people who are already on this road with you. And why do you still have to turn down your nose at the others?

On the other hand, the folks who lived on the edge in the 70’s, smoking and drinking, and engaging in serial youthful indiscretions, seem to still revel in that, as though it’s not just a badge, but a lifestyle. Again, it’s been 30 years. What are you up to now?

A big difference is that high school kids are more inclined to talk about injuries, overcoming physical obstacles or limitations, than college friends, who would probably prefer to hire counsel to take care of that cancer scare, or the restrictions resulting from that accident.

But while nothing ever really changes, you do find out that high school was really just a phase for some people, and that for these folks, they were neither scarred, tarnished, nor handicapped by that time and place. And these folks, ironically people who have moved away from home, mostly great distances, and in each instance to communities significantly different than the close-in NYC burbs, seemed to have not only grown the most, but seem most comfortable and at ease. And they were the most revealing, and the most interesting to talk with, whether early in the evening, or later at night, when libations somehow still managed to flow.

Perhaps it’s what I get out of these events, but connecting with someone I either knew briefly, not that well, or in some cases, not at all, but with whom there was a shared experience (a bus ride to school for several years, a class, or just attendance at the same school for a year or so), makes the time and the effort involved in getting to these things quite worthwhile. And in that sense, whether it’s a meeting of former blue collar kids in an Italian restaurant on Central Avenue in Yonkers, or overachieving high flying Ivy Leaguers on the main green in Providence, that shared experience, whenever it was, provides us with the foundation for a conversation, and a reminder of who we are, and how we got there.

As for where we go from here, I am ever more convinced that relatively few of us have a clue, except for those who are living out their dreams, following the path they set upon a while back, and nailing it. But I do know that with a class of high school kids who are now everything from repairmen to milkmen to bra-fitters to court reporters and even anesthesiologists, we’ve got the bases covered. And the makings for another helluva party, if we ever find a way to get together again.

And I still think it would probably remain a good idea to keep my HS buds and my college pals apart. Was never certain if Porsches and Camaros mixed. Or how that would work. That would be a test of how the rubber meets the road!