On Facebook, The High School Reunion Never Ends

Last weekend my father went to his 50th high school reunion. Overall he thought it was a hoot, but after a while, he said, it was hard making conversation with people that he didn't really know, and hadn't seen since Eisenhower was in office. Since he finished high school in 1958, and even since the other reunions, everyone had moved on and done a million things. Even with e-mail, it was hard keeping up with people.

I didn't go to my 10 year high school reunion back in 2005. From all accounts I heard it was poorly planned and poorly attended. This surprised me, because my graduating class generally got along well, even if we did spend much of our time gently abusing one another. It would have been nice to see everyone, especially since I went out of state to college and spent very little time after graduation in Norwalk, Connecticut., my hometown, save for a summer or two. Post-college I took the fast train to New York City, and I never looked back.

I've been on Facebook for about two years, but over the past six months old classmates, some dating back to elementary school, have been adding me as a friend. This is a process I'm familiar with, since I'm a veteran of MySpace as well as Friendster. Instantly, I not only know where they are in life: married, single, expecting the third baby, whatever, but it goes a step further: I have a mirror into their day-today minutiae. Who's feeling overwhelmed? Who's newborn didn't sleep last night? Who's obsessed with Dancing With The Stars? Who's stuck at the airport? It's all there, in living color, for me to see everyday. I've also heard of classmates, some of whom barely spoke in high school, connecting over Facebook in order to get the name of a wedding photographer or some other service they'd used. I see old sorority sisters, who I know haven't spoken in years, leave messages on each others walls, promising to call later in the evening to discuss matters of child rearing.

The photo albums are the best part. I see everyone gussied up at weddings, their recent trips to Disney or just snapshots from their lives. They have the pleasure of flipping through shots of my antics in New York City and seeing everything from fancy parties to perhaps far too many photos of my cats. They can size me up at their leisure, and I can do the same to them.

Lately my little network has even been serving as a defacto peanut gallery, piping in and commenting on my status updates and even offering advice on shopping decisions and other mundane tasks. (Thanks to a string of comments I decided to buy a pair of leopard print boots I had been on the fence about.) These aren't people I see everyday, and some live thousands of miles away, but it's nice to hear from them every now and again, however small.

Of the roughly 365 friends that I have on Facebook, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable bumping into any of them at the grocery store nowadays, a feeling I often had during my summers in Norwalk as an undergrad. There wouldn't be any awkward conversation in the produce aisle, the polite but painful greet-and-toss one has to engage in with acquaintances. There is little shame these days in starting a conversation with, "Hey, I saw that thing you posted on Facebook and..." It sure beats, "So, where are you working these days?"

Reunions carry with them a natural anxiety, a worry about how you're perceived by your cruelest judges - your old school friends. But now that everyone's on Facebook, that anxiety is almost moot. As a generation, this is a marked improvement over how our parents functioned, who only saw old friends on special occasions, and always promised to stay in touch, although few did. From what I've absorbed over the past few months, we don't need to e-mail one another constantly to stay on top of things. Just a status update or a new set of photos will do just fine.

Comments

[FatClown]

As a result of facebook, I'm actualy looking forward to my next reunion. It's nice knowing in advance how fat everyone got.

[GeologyRocks]

I agree with the previous comment about this post being a good article. Although I never logged onto Facebook, I have played around with Myspace after finding a college era band"s Myspace page during a Google search a couple of years back. Until this post, I had never thought of using it to locate anyone I might have known in high school. The only old neighborhood/school friend I have heard from in the last several years was a friend who tracked me down the old fashioned way, using directory assistance, after he saw where I was living included in my dad"s obituary in the LA Times. All things being equal, I would rather he had tracked me down using Myspace.

[VickiSalemi]

Great piece, Pauline! Ironically I read it as a result of - you guessed it - your post on Facebook. =)