High School Reunions – Go or No?
I’m elderly. Did you know that?
Because I bloody well didn’t realize this horrible fact until I was faced with my 20 year high school reunion.
It was like a face-plant to a sliding glass door.
Twenty YEARS? Where the hell did TWENTY YEARS go?
I mean, I could have sworn we were just being lectured on why it was critically important to NOT throw our moldy graduation caps because they would spear us in the head (a warning which we totally ignored, FYI).
Does time really flee that fast? Are decades truly swallowed up in the speeding tornado of life?
Are Guns N Roses really considered RETRO?
I’ve never been to a reunion, always finding an excuse not to go. The list was long, if not imaginative:
- X-Files was in a marathon of reruns.
- I was knocked-up.
- I lived over the bridge.
- My daughter (afore mentioned offspring) was teething. Sick. Crawling. Talking.
- The dog ate something weird and I had to sign my life away to Hyannis Animal Hospital.
- I got knocked up . . . again. Damn husband.
- My car needed to be washed . . . or bombed.
- I didn’t really know many people in high school.
- I wouldn’t be missed.
And the biggest one . . .
- I CAN GO NEXT TIME.
So, here’s the deal about my list. All are basically true, but #10 is NOT a given. Life, I have realized, is breakable. I’ve known this since childhood – seen it too clearly, flirted with it too closely. And yet, it took these past few years to really understand HOW fleeting time can be. How fragile life is.
We are who we are, not because of four years we spent inside a high school together, but because of the twenty years since.
I’m going to reunion this November (and dragging my BFF with me), not to compare my classmates to who they once were, but to meet them as they are now. I’m going so I can learn of all that they have seen and done since the day we threw a bunch of cherry red caps into a brilliant blue sky. And, damn it, I’m going because at our core, we were all Raiders . . . and wicked Rebels.
Cape Cod Scribe 
Go. You’ll be surprised at how interesting some of the people you never really knew have become. And you’ll talk to them, too. ( and you’ll be one of those interesting people too).
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Thanks Marianne – I am planning on going :)
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I went to mine, because my best friend and I went together. Had a great time with some folks, and fun to see who went bald. I’m glad I went. However, I shall not tell you how long ago mine was. I am vasty older than you.
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I’m hoping to go with my BFF Laura as well, Mary. Glad you had a ton of fun . . . and you ain’t that old, WOMAN!
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