I couldn’t make it this time. That was a disappointing
outcome, as a close friend was sick and we had to cancel the room and
arrangements when it was down to the last few days before the event. But, the
good news is that in the wide world of Social Media, you can almost virtually
attend. As they say, Social Media brings good things to life…Which means anyone
can find out who’s going & who’s not, who’s living & who has died, and
who is “living large” for the world to see with a veritable avalanche of photos
and messages on Facebook.
The whole ambience of the event comes across with pictures
and images that takes us back to the fun of “Beach Week” or the excitement we
felt before graduation. We were comrades in arms and buddies. So the close ties
and unbreakable bonds are still felt after all these years.
“What time do we check
out?” comes from a 58-year old teen at heart writing on Facebook. Other
messages followed like, “I’d like to
start working out now!” or “Sorry I
can’t make it-take plenty of pictures!”
And boy, do they have pictures, at times it looks like an onslaught of
Hallmark photo spreads.
These are mixed with more hilarious messages, and then some
poignant ones, “My doctor didn’t ok me
to travel so I can’t be there”. And
then there’s always the over-eager beavers in the crowd, “We arrived yesterday. I went 5.5 miles on the treadmill, and then had a
quick dip in the Ocean before getting ready for the party tonight!”
All of these things bring back memories of high school. Has
it been 40 years…really? It seems like only 40 days have passed. A friend &
I used to have dreams where we were back in high school. We were racing to
finish an exam or we were late to class invariably. Even after College, I had
these dreams. What could they possibly mean? Anxiety dreams perhaps, or maybe
just a longing for a simpler place and time…
The 10 year Reunion was a high/low point on the Spectrometer
Scale of Reunions. It’s an anti-climactic let-down combined with an eye-opening
jolt of adrenaline for most of us. One of my close friends was subjected to the
“mean girls” syndrome at this event and has never quite recovered. Another
close friend has never bothered to go at all. Still others plan for weeks in
advance and decide just what they are going to wear because they wouldn’t miss
it for the world.
High School Reunions in general remain a big business in
this country, and they often live up to the spectacles they create and the
drama that ensues. And beneath it all, burned somewhere deep, remains the
psyches and sentimentality of a group of homogenous Western teens who were
raised in another era- a time of blue jeans & bell-bottoms, of Watergate
& pot-smoking hippies, of protestors & the looming shadow of the
Vietnam War.
That era is bygone, a remnant of the time machine found
buried deep inside each of our heads. But it pops out every now and then when
we greet each other at the ritualized American Ceremonial Event known as the
High School Reunion.
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