My 10 year high school reunion was two and a half years ago. No, I didn’t feel old. I didn’t feel like I’d wasted the last 10 years. I didn’t feel overly nostalgic for the time I’d spent in high school. I’d read stories and watched movies about people facing down their 10 year high school reunion with fear or regret or sadness, or unending excitement because high school truly was The Best Years of Their Life and they never really got over it. Personally, I think it’s all blown out of proportion, and when I got the invitation for the reunion, I didn’t really feel anything. If I said that I was surprised it had already been 10 years, I was lying because I’ve been more aware of the last 10 years than of any other epoch in my life so far. Blame it on keeping a journal, I guess.
The problem with the high school reunion these days is that it’s not really about getting together with old friends you still have or the friends you had back then and remembering the Good Old Days. It’s more about wanting to show off, wanting to get laid, or genuine curiosity. But Facebook has pretty much annihilated any curiosity because let’s face it: I know everything there is to know about the Class of ’99 because of the obscene amount of information available on the internet. There was no mystery, there was no revelation. Besides, of the people who comprised the small circle of friends I had in high school, I was still friends with most of them, and we kept in touch regularly so it wasn’t about reminiscing either.
When I saw the guest list and read the list of names, I didn’t recognize 90% of them. I spent most of my time in high school learning, hanging out with my friends on a staircase landing near the computer labs, and spending weekends in either my parents’ living room or my friends’ parents’ basement watching movies and drinking a lot of soft drinks. SOFT DRINKS. High school parties? If they happened, I didn’t know about them. Ex-boyfriends? Didn’t date in high school. Life-changing experiences with friends I made while studying abroad? Memories made while changing the world with other like-minded people who wanted to make it a better place? See the bit about hanging out on a staircase landing near the computer labs.
Still, I couldn’t help but think back to the day I graduated from high school. It feels like only seconds ago, I was sitting in the auditorium, surrounded by people I didn’t know because we were seated alphabetically, which from a logistical standpoint makes total sense, but from the point of view of an 18 year old, it was stupid because I wanted to be with my friends. Instead I was seated beside people I didn’t know and the only thing we could have had in common was the same first consonant of our surname.
I watched my classmates walk across the stage and listened to speech after speech. I remember one in particular, or at least part of it: “Remember you are loved, you will always be loved. Sometimes, you may not know by whom.” It sounds…extraordinarily creepy now, but I remember being absolutely struck by it at the time. I remember taking pictures outside, and there’s one that I have somewhere of all of us, arms slung across each others’ shoulders, wrapped around each others’ waists, someone making a peace sign. That picture would be so different now: there would be new best friends, there would be some unease between people who have grown apart, there would be husbands and wives and kids.
My sister’s 10 year high school reunion is coming up this year. I’m not sure if she’s going, and if she doesn’t, she’s really not missing much. There’s such a hyper-idealized vision of reunions that there is no way they won’t be intensely disappointing. You’re not going back to your high school to drink and listen to 80s music and dance with the person you never got to dance with. You’re going to a run-down bar that used to be a funeral parlor. True story.
“You know, when you started getting invited to your ten year high school reunion, time is catching up.”
“Are you talking about a sense of my own mortality or a fear of death?”
“Well, I never really thought about it quite like that.”
“Did you go to yours?”
“Yes, I did. It was just as if everyone had swelled.”
