A few years ago, I helped plan my Weequahic High School (Newark, NJ) 40th reunion. Due to a last-minute personal situation, I wound up not attending. And no, that situation was not that Weight Watchers booted me out over that unfortunate potato chip incident or that the damn zipper on my dress just wouldn't go up.
But I recently found myself in central Florida, where my reunion co-chair (read: the woman I dumped all the real reunion planning work on before I bailed) has recently moved. Not being one to hold grudges, she invited me to spend the night, and I gratefully accepted.
I'm happy to report that when you liked someone in high school, you likely will like them 40 years later. While people do change -- and in some cases evolve -- basically what you saw then is what you get now. Except maybe in a larger-size jeans (I'm talking about me here, not Helen.)
The arrogant kids turn into arrogant adults; the snobby kids will still snub you; and the ones that would invite you over to their lunch table will invite you over to their new home in central Florida just because they are nice like that.
But hooking up with people who knew you in high school is always a loaded proposition. There are the inevitable comparisons of success in all things from career to marriage to how your offspring have fared. There is also the risk of altered memories: I think I hated high school and remember myself as a 60s-style hippie; yet there I am posing in the yearbook in my majorette uniform with my baton held high. Was I really a rah-rah girl? Apparently so.
And of course there is the curiosity factor. Did the class valedictorian burn out at Harvard? Did the fast girl who sat behind you in math have five kids and six husbands? Did the former football star's muscles all turn to flab? And in my class -- the class of 1968 -- we also had to ask: How many fallen heros did we lose in Vietnam and how many civil rights lawyers did we produce?
Graduations and reunions have a lot in common. There are tinges of remorse in both. When you graduate, you move on to a new experience and in most cases, leave behind those you feel close to. With a reunion, you come back fleetingly before returning to what is your real life.
Fortunately, Helen and I had plenty to talk about. I left knowing it wouldn't be another 40 years before we visited again. She promised to fan me on this page (and has already followed through) and I promised to organize the next reunion without dumping it all on her lap (and I haven't) -- because basically, we are the same people we were in high school.
Here are are some photos of us now and then. How about adding your own?
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MY SWIMMING POOL
Sometime surviving high school is it's own reward
of my old high school friends and it was truly magical.
This is not a universal situation much as some might want to believe it. That can be hard to accept. Not everyone in school is nice to everyone else so sometimes maybe some graduates years later even some on reunion committees may not have the best of motives. (I do NOT mean you, personally!)
Why make this claim? See my earlier entry-Tree-Lady 4:43PM 6/13. People from what was probably my 25th reunion comm--I'm Class of 64--chatted me up about the reunion at my job. I expressed interest & asked questions.
I never got an invite.
They could've sent it to my work address but I left a trail of breadcrumbs. I never changed my name. Classmates knew where I was going to univ.After getting my degree I worked on the same campus for 35 yrs. I ran into school friends on campus 5? years after I began working there. We talked for a long while. I didn't make a secret of where I was working. Past homes-present home-high school-college are all less than 8 miles apart.
I've never received one class reunion invitation.
You suggest reunion comm members are victimized by no-shows or people who don't update their names/whereabouts.My POV? Certain students were victimized in school & ignored afterward