40th Reunion

When Jon came back from a weekend reunion last year with some of his college friends, he said he couldn't get the voice patterns of his friend Al out of his head. They had driven down to North Carolina together -- an eight hour drive -- and back again, so he got a full dose.  He had stories to tell about the guys who he knew well about 40 years ago and those conversations stuck with him for days.

I didn't have to travel so far, but I just went to my 40th high school reunion this weekend and I feel like the same thing happened to me.  All these people who I haven't seen since I was a teenager -- some of them were barely recognizable and some looked so much the same -- are now stuck in my head.  I was not expecting to have a very good time at this event but I went because the organizer is so earnest and dogged and hard-working: it seemed ungrateful to ignore his email and Facebook pleas when I only had to drive 12 minutes to get to the American Legion Hall in Vienna.

Others went on the tour of our recently renovated high school building and to the football game and bowling and to a pub, but I skipped all that.  I just went to the night time gathering on Saturday and I did not even think to invite Jon to come with me.  That seemed totally unnecessary. 

We were all surprised to be old enough to be at a 40th reunion.  And yet, it was somehow the right amount of time for us to have forgotten what it was really like to be in high school so we could basically ignore whatever our old patterns were. The shy people weren't shy anymore and the cool people weren't cool.  We were just a bunch of old people brought together by a shared history.  It was plenty interesting hearing the life stories and staring at all that time had done to the bodies of those formerly youthful people. A bald head really changes the look of a high school boy.  And some of the women had changed their hair color completely, which was confusing.

The main organizer, Kevin, had decided that we didn't need anything fancy and he didn't need a big budget.  We were in a modest but satisfactory space, we had unremarkable but edible food, there was a cash bar, and we sat on folding chairs around round tables. There weren't enough chairs or tables so the groups kept shifting and re-forming as people got up and stole chairs, making everything much less static than if we had been in a hotel ball room with enough seats for all.  Our graduating class had about 530 of us, and Kevin had rounded up 70 for this evening, in addition to some who went to those gatherings I skipped.

Most of my closest friends were not there.  That is usually the case at reunions.  But that means that I end up talking to people that I did not know as well, and I often find that I like people that I would never have thought I would like.  That's what happens when the cool people aren't cool anymore. We start over. I spent a lot of time with a lady who moved out of the suburbs to live on Furnace Mountain on 30 acres in a modular house and who is now an environmental educator of some kind. I would never have predicted that future for her.  I listened to the crazy dreams and ambitions of a truly irrepressible (not sure that is the word I want) entrepreneur who has run for public nine times and never won.  He always has another idea for making it big and he is lucky that he inherited a propane business from his father so he can finance some of those ideas.

A friend from yearbook and most of my interesting classes had offered to host a brunch on Sunday, with an open invitation to anyone from those groups.  It seemed likely there would only be three of us (who did know and like each other well 40 years ago) but we ended up with 8 semi-connected but nice people at her dining room table the next day.  We stayed for three hours, talking about the present and not so much about the past. I was kind of interested that we didn't really talk about our children, who are mostly grown and gone, except as examples of something in today's society.  I used to be quite shy but I seem to be over that and the conversation was lively -- most of us have jobs that interest us and we all have opinions on everything. I don't think there were any Trump supporters in the room (phew) but there was one devoted Gary Johnson fan who had traveled back to Virginia from Arizona for this reunion.

When I went to the 30th reunion, I told myself I wasn't going to any more of those because it was boring and weird. But this time maybe we had all finally outgrown our high school selves and maybe the people who came didn't have anything to prove, they were just curious.  It was a lot more fun and interesting than I feared and I will try to round up some more people next time.