How Not to Get Ready for Your High School Reunion

Nearly ten years ago, I attended the 20th reunion of my high school's graduating class of 1980. During an assembly in the high school auditorium, we were feted by the current students in a ritual that we too had participated in when we were in school. Skits are always presented making light of the school and the world 10, 20, 30, and 40 years earlier -- one skit for each of the four classes holding its reunion that weekend (those graduating 50, 60, or even 70 years earlier are invited to the assembly, but don't get a special skit).

Last time, the classes were seated as I suppose they must always be: the 40th closest to the stage (to help with hearing?), the 30th behind them, followed by the 20th (my class ten years ago), and finally the 10th in the back. As I took my seat I looked down below me at the members of the class of 1970 gathering for their 30th reunion. My response was immediate and lasting: if that's what people look like after 30 years, then I won't be back.

I hadn't attended my 10th reunion because I was a poor graduate student living a thousand miles away. I went to the 20th because I was back in the area and a bit curious. We had barely gotten an email list started at that time, photo attachments to emails were a novelty, and there was no such thing as a blog or Facebook. The reunion could thus fulfill its ancient and enduring purpose: letting us see what everyone else looks like.

It's not just their faces, hair, and weight. It's not just the relative pulchritude of the person on their arms. It's the way they carry themselves: have they accommodated themselves to life's vagaries, or in trying to control life's ups and downs wantonly or foolishly have they begun to wear themselves down prematurely? Are they posing by smiling too much at the wrong moments? Are they interested in other people or only how they stack up against them using some arbitrary measurement of looks or status?

I got a good taste of all this at my 20th reunion. I told myself, "That was interesting, but it was the last one." In the meantime, Facebook emerged among college students, but has found its true calling in reconnecting much older sorts with their high school classmates (I even friended someone from my 4th grade class). I friended some in my graduating class from high school, others friended me, and in the sixth months since I've had Facebook, I've been connected with about a dozen of those who got their diplomas in May 1980. It must scare them or at least shock them when they see my graying hair and other signs of age in my photos. I've been forced on more than one occasion myself to stare at the eyes in their photos before I could recognize them, so much had their other features changed.

More than anything else, this is now why I don't want to go to my 30th reunion. It must inevitably devolve into the world's largest free-range open-casket funeral, where we all walk up to living corpses of what we once were and either admire or criticize the mortician for how the remains are presented. Do I really want to take part? Is there any function of a high school reunion that can't now be fulfilled by Facebook and email?

Somebody must be on the verge of organizing our 30th reunion, since it's due to occur this October. If I go, I will have to decide why to ignore the logic of this post. There are some awfully nice people in my class, and we've all learned things that it would be good to share. But I don't want to remember. The sweetness, bitterness, and poignancy of the late 1970s is only exacerbated by the passage of time. Recalling it all at once might lead to an emotional overload. Moreover, I don't have stories of children (or grandchildren) to share, leaving me high and dry during most of the conversations (I noticed this even ten years ago). I think I'd rather just lurk on Facebook, hope that none of my classmates unfriend me if they read this, and do my remembering in much safer, and smaller, doses.