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My high school 20 year reunion
Aug. 12th, 2007 08:10 amI had a very good reason to skip Gaskell's last night: the Henry M. Gunn Senior High School class of '87 reunion. I'm still trippin' out about the whole experience, it was very surreal.
For those of you who have never been to a high school reunion (I went to my 10 year as well as my 20 year) everybody there falls into three categories:
1. Friends
"Hi!!!!! How are you?!?!?!"
With girls: *hugs* *cheek kisses*
With boys: *hearty handshakes* *man hugs + back slapping*
2. People who look familiar
*Look at face*
*Look at name badge, read name, look back up at face, remember person*
*Realize they've been doing the same thing to you*
"Hi, nice to see you."
*Friendly handshake*
3. People you don't at all recognize
*Walk straight past like any random person on the street*
You repeat this scenario over and over again. It's #2 that really gets to you. There's a sea of faces that just look so familiar, that throw you straight back to high school, except you're all so much older now with jobs and lives and spouses and kids. Every single conversation you have starts by exchanging three essential pieces of information:
1. Where you live
2. Marital status
3. Children you've spawned
There's a fourth optional piece of information, which is what you do. It's strange and interesting that your marital status and the number of kids you're responsible for always comes before, and often supersedes, what you do for a living. Of course, I don't have any kids, so I'd be willing to guess that my priorities are different than just about everyone else there.
Almost everybody at my reunion was, in fact, married and did, in fact, have children. This was especially weird for me because it made me feel like I was the odd man out. To their credit, almost none of my classmates brought their spouses to the event, lest they be bored to tears. Those significant others who did come seemed to gravitate to each other and form intimate conversations in corners, since they all had exactly one thing in common.
The most important part of it all, of course, is the chance to see people you were actually close to back in the day. I was blessed in that almost all the people I really, really wanted to see came to the reunion. In fact, almost all of them still live in the area (one even a few blocks from me!) which I found rather surprising. In high school I split my time hanging out between two groups: an eclectic group of dreamers/techies/semi-outcasts and the band.
These two guys, Ed and Tim, were my best friends growing up. Tim I actually went to nursery school with, although he had a lot more hair then. We all lived not far from each other in the hills, and spent the evening reminiscing about how crazy we were to ride 30 minutes down steep hills just to go to the movies (at the Old Mill, anyone else remember that place?) or Tower Records. Ed I keep up with every few months, but Tim I hadn't seen in years and years, so it was good to get to know each other again.
The band crowd was, with only a couple of exceptions, all girls. There was one set of four girls who were inseparable in high school, and all four of them were at the reunion. A couple of them I'd seen once or twice over the years, but others it had been far too long. Three of them are mothers with 2+ kids. Yikes!
Finally, one special connection was my old friend Jenny, my fellow lead trombone player from band, who had transferred into our school only the last couple of years. She and I had bonded instantly (and conveniently lived close to each other). She called me "Jim" for no particular reason than she accidentally called me that shortly after we met, and though embarrassed by her initial mistake continued to call me that through the rest of high school. After school she dropped off the map and no one new what became of her. I was pleasantly shocked that she made a brief stop at the reunion. When she called me Paul instead of Jim, it sounded so strange, so wrong, but getting the chance to just see her, meet her husband, and know that she was well and good was enough to make me happy.
If you ever get an invitation to go to a high school reunion, I encourage you to do it. It's super-trippy, but well worth the experience.
For those of you who have never been to a high school reunion (I went to my 10 year as well as my 20 year) everybody there falls into three categories:
1. Friends
"Hi!!!!! How are you?!?!?!"
With girls: *hugs* *cheek kisses*
With boys: *hearty handshakes* *man hugs + back slapping*
2. People who look familiar
*Look at face*
*Look at name badge, read name, look back up at face, remember person*
*Realize they've been doing the same thing to you*
"Hi, nice to see you."
*Friendly handshake*
3. People you don't at all recognize
*Walk straight past like any random person on the street*
You repeat this scenario over and over again. It's #2 that really gets to you. There's a sea of faces that just look so familiar, that throw you straight back to high school, except you're all so much older now with jobs and lives and spouses and kids. Every single conversation you have starts by exchanging three essential pieces of information:
1. Where you live
2. Marital status
3. Children you've spawned
There's a fourth optional piece of information, which is what you do. It's strange and interesting that your marital status and the number of kids you're responsible for always comes before, and often supersedes, what you do for a living. Of course, I don't have any kids, so I'd be willing to guess that my priorities are different than just about everyone else there.
Almost everybody at my reunion was, in fact, married and did, in fact, have children. This was especially weird for me because it made me feel like I was the odd man out. To their credit, almost none of my classmates brought their spouses to the event, lest they be bored to tears. Those significant others who did come seemed to gravitate to each other and form intimate conversations in corners, since they all had exactly one thing in common.
The most important part of it all, of course, is the chance to see people you were actually close to back in the day. I was blessed in that almost all the people I really, really wanted to see came to the reunion. In fact, almost all of them still live in the area (one even a few blocks from me!) which I found rather surprising. In high school I split my time hanging out between two groups: an eclectic group of dreamers/techies/semi-outcasts and the band.
These two guys, Ed and Tim, were my best friends growing up. Tim I actually went to nursery school with, although he had a lot more hair then. We all lived not far from each other in the hills, and spent the evening reminiscing about how crazy we were to ride 30 minutes down steep hills just to go to the movies (at the Old Mill, anyone else remember that place?) or Tower Records. Ed I keep up with every few months, but Tim I hadn't seen in years and years, so it was good to get to know each other again.
The band crowd was, with only a couple of exceptions, all girls. There was one set of four girls who were inseparable in high school, and all four of them were at the reunion. A couple of them I'd seen once or twice over the years, but others it had been far too long. Three of them are mothers with 2+ kids. Yikes!
Finally, one special connection was my old friend Jenny, my fellow lead trombone player from band, who had transferred into our school only the last couple of years. She and I had bonded instantly (and conveniently lived close to each other). She called me "Jim" for no particular reason than she accidentally called me that shortly after we met, and though embarrassed by her initial mistake continued to call me that through the rest of high school. After school she dropped off the map and no one new what became of her. I was pleasantly shocked that she made a brief stop at the reunion. When she called me Paul instead of Jim, it sounded so strange, so wrong, but getting the chance to just see her, meet her husband, and know that she was well and good was enough to make me happy.
If you ever get an invitation to go to a high school reunion, I encourage you to do it. It's super-trippy, but well worth the experience.
