Reunion Recollections, Part One

September 25, 2010

A building is a tenuous bond, if you consider it simply as a structure. Pop in 425 kids, though, (I heard numbers as high as 720 and as specific as 453 last night) and, suddenly, you’ve got a community. The classmates I saw at my 30th reunion last night really only had one thing in common—we’d all gone to East High School in the late 70s.

To their credit, none of my classmates look like they’re in their late 70s. And I can think of only one spouse who appeared to be in her 70s. But who am I to put limits on love?

It was great fun to catch up with people, to search their faces for their old selves—sometimes discovering, with relief, that their old selves had gone away and had been replaced with something calmer, happier, sturdier. Almost inevitably thicker.

Gone, too, were the cockadoodledoos of a 10th reunion, that loathed scientific experiment in the pecking order of humankind. Mostly, we were just glad to be alive and together. Or at least mostly together. And we weren’t terribly concerned about letting our warts show (though I’ll admit that I might have put on a little foundation and blush, just to fancy up a bit). The humor was mostly self deprecating, outing ourselves before someone else could, though no one seemed particularly interested in throwing the first stone.

Some folks arrived in predictable tribes, surrounding themselves with their long-ago peeps. Others, myself included, had no shield to hold up, walking in alone, hopeful that we’d be able to read each other’s name tags or spy a friendly face.

Some classmates I met for the first time last night, 30 years after tossing our tassels, post graduation. Ron is the first to come to mind. A police officer in Crete, we’d found each other on Facebook and then again at Bunkers, smiling at the newly-forged, albeit digital, bond we’d formed. Hats off to him for coming to his first-ever class reunion. I was glad to spend time with him.

I laughed a lot last night. Laughed at what we’d done, chuckled at what I’d become (really, when you’ve been going to East High since you were 12 years old, it starts to feel like you’ve married your cousin or something), made some new bonds in the form of ablations and graduations, divorce and death.

I’m glad I went to Bunkers last night. For one, it’s the first time I’ve ever caught a glimpse of that ritzy neighborhood. Can’t say much for the rubber-stamped sameness of their brick-and-mortar flags of wealth, but this neighborhood’s gathering place proved ample enough for the likes of us. I’m glad I woke with a fuzzy voice, evidence of too many stories told. I’m glad I ate hash browns at midnight, learning new secrets about Trish, dreaming of being related to Julie through a relative’s marriage, laughing about the shenanigans we all managed to survive 30 years ago.