Class Reunions

If you were waiting all week to hear the rest of the story about how Wally told people his scar was from when the bear tried to eat him or how I survived living with Wes who made life feel at times you were living with a tornado you have to wait another week.  My mind has been preoccupied with other things.

For the last few months I have been attending meetings once a month planning my high school class's 55th reunion. This is the first time I have gotten involved with the planning of a reunion and I have not made it to all the reunions for reasons I will get into later. The one thing I have always wondered about was where some of the people I grew up with were. So like a complete idiot I said I would try to find some of the people that never seem to come to the reunions.

Sounded quite simple.  I got the list of the missing classmates and a list of the deceased from the gal who has taken care of it for the last twenty years or so.  She has been very good through the years on setting up a web page for the class, information about reunions, meetings and the notices of who had passed away.  However, some of the people I was really curious about were not on either list and some of the missing people I am actually friends with on good old Facebook.  So, I asked her for the Master List and realized that somewhere in the switch from snail mail to email there were a lot of people that we really did not have email addresses for. Did those people just never want to hear anything about the kids they grew up with or did they just get lost by moving and changing email addresses.  

So began my quest, not with a sword or hiking through the vast wilderness but with a magical computer and cell phone.  In the last two days I have sent fifty emails checking the addresses which is pretty easy since a bad address gets immediately kicked back and probably twenty messages on Messenger to people I found there. The fun part is when I have gotten nice responses back from people I remember only from their picture in the Yearbook and "you must be crazy" from ones I have seen at reunions or are friends with through social media. If you are a member of the Muskogee High School Class of 64 and haven't heard from me yet it is because I have only gotten through the E's, I know where you are or I can't find you. (That is a hint to contact me.)

I have found it very interesting in talking to people through the years about their thoughts on class reunions.  There are some, like me, that try never to miss one if possible.  Or they are in contact in some way with people they grew up with or even just went to college with.  On the other hand, I hear people proclaim that they have never and will never go to a class reunion.  I have asked why someone does not want to step back in time for a day or two and see people who were a pretty big part of their lives at a really important time.  They seem to not really have an answer and just sort of say they are not interested in that sort of thing.

I can't answer the question of why I have "non-reunion" classmates.  The best I can do is to explain how I feel and my experience.

I grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma which actually was about the same size of a town that it is now.  I proudly admit to being the first of the Baby Boomer Generation and lived in one of those "after the war" two bedroom houses on the East side of town.  I did not know until junior high school that the west side of town was where all the big houses were and where I lived was the equivalent of living on the wrong side of the tracks.  No matter, I had friends and we played in the street until dark every night.  I slowly grew passed the stage of skinned up knees and hems torn out of my dresses to piano and dance lessons. By junior high we had moved to a new bigger house but still on the east side of town. The teenage insecurities began to set in as they do with everyone
at that age.

Then in high school the east and west sides of town blended together to form a class of about five hundred students.  I got over the imagined stigma of being on the wrong side of town and replaced it with not being cute, popular, didn't have any friends and whatever else I could fret over.  At the same time I kept trying to fit in and joined every activity I could, had crushes on boys who I thought never noticed I was there and tried to be friends with everyone.  But I went to school everyday with a smile on my face and look back at those years as my having a heck of a good time.  For all the work and effort it took to have a good time it is hard to over look the disappointments and mistakes and I should probably have been a great candidate for not going back to a reunion.

Going off to college to a private girl's school was not my idea especially since I knew absolutely no one there.  Here I was the country bumpkin from Oklahoma with people from New York, Hawaii, L.A. and every place in between.  It was a great learning experience in that I was able to not worry so much about not knowing anyone as we were all making new friends.  The amazing thing was that I managed to stay friends with two very special girls and even though we don't see each other for years when we do get together it is like a day had never pasted in between. There was something very special about the time we had shared that one year, some connection, that never went away.

When I got married and moved away from Muskogee I never had any contact with my high school classmates except for one.  It was standard procedure for me to stop by and see Robert at his drugstore to say hi and get some of the latest news on some of the people.  He added my changes of address through the years to the class list and when our ten year reunion came up I got an invitation.  Much to my dismay my husband thought of a million reasons why we couldn't go and I do remember crying a lot the weekend of the reunion but also telling myself that I would not have had any fun, no one would remember me and every other consoling thought I could come up with.

When the twenty year reunion rolled around it was many moves, many states and many new friends that seemed to get lost once I moved on to the next place. I put my big shoes on and stood my ground on the husband's refusal to go.  I think my statement was I would go by myself.  We all drove Oklahoma for the reunion, he very unhappy about the whole thing. If I tried to think of the best and the worst weekend of my life, that was it.

Somehow, a first in twenty years, I got to go into Muskogee from Warner where we were staying and help decorate on Friday afternoon.  I can remember being quite nervous about seeing everyone and worried that no one would even know who I was.  Maybe this was really a bad, stupid idea. However to my amazement everyone not only recognized me but seemed actually glad to see me. I wondered if my being pleased was the result of just moving so much.  It seemed like I was always making new friends, moving off and once gone not having much in common with them. 

The Friday night "meet and greet" was fun but a little tense.  Dennis, the husband, was not in the least way having fun and not even making an attempt. He hung on my elbow all night and I as I watched the expressions on his face I realized there were limits to what he could put up with.  It was pretty obvious he was not pleased with the conversations and definitely not the hugging from people of either sex although I tried hard not to exclude him.  The picnic in the park did not go much better the next day.  Saturday night was the worst and I would not wish the events of that night on my very worst enemy. I remember every awful thing he said to me and how many times I ran to the bathroom so everyone did not see me in tears. 

One might think that I would never think about going to a reunion again.  Nope....Because by the twenty-fifth there was no husband in tow, I had kept in contact with a lot of the people I had seen at the twentieth and have tried not to miss any in the years since.  One of the interesting things about going back is that I can really laugh about some of the high school events that seemed so horrible at the time.  Now it is easy to see the guy who broke the date to the senior prom with me a week before the prom and realized maybe once a jerk, always a jerk plus I did manage to find a date and we had more fun than anyone else there. I actually forgave the boy from junior high who gave me the nickname "Busty" and who yell it across the gym or the football field when I was a cheerleader because he apologized for it at one of the reunions.

The fun parts are hearing a voice across the room at the fiftieth and recognize it as belonging to someone you knew from the first grade and haven't seen since high school, talking to people that never spoke to you back then and the new friendships made.  Our class has reunions every five years, there were several gatherings between Christmas and New Years and we have had fiftieth, sixty-fifth and seventieth birthday parties.  We have had a lot of classmates reconnect and marry after attending a reunion which is pretty cool. It has been very special to me that my current husband, Marshell, seems to like my classmates and to go to my reunions as much as I do.

So just what is the big deal about going to a reunion?  Do you not go because for you those were miserable years?  Sorry, not an excuse as growing up is not easy to do but there were a lot of people experiencing the same things at the same time that you did.  Do you not go because you gained weight, your hair turned grey and no one will recognize you?  Not an excuse because after maybe the twentieth you won't recognize hardly anyone without a name tag. (There are exceptions to this and you just quietly hate them.)  Do you not go because you did not become the President of GM or drive a BMW?  Once again not an excuse because no one stands at the entrance to the parking lot and writes down what you arrived in or asks for a resume.  That all ends at about the twentieth. Did you go to one reunion and no one talked to you?  Again, not an excuse because there are a lot of people especially with a big school and the normal thing is to visit with your old buddies.  Go up to someone you had a connection with, were in band or basketball with and say "Hi, I remember you from band". I think it will only take a person or two to make you feel like you belong there. It isn't a junior high school dance where the boys sit on one side of the gym and girls on the other waiting for someone to make the first move.

Why go to a reunion?  That is so simple it is silly.  You spent twelve years with basically the same people surrounding you that had the same victories or disappointments you did.  Stop and think about it but you may have been around these people longer than a spouse or had a better relationship with them than with your parents.  There is a connection between you and your classmates that is hard to explain.  Maybe it is because it is or was your hometown and the people are part of your roots. It is about all the adventures and influences, good and not so good, in our learning how to be grownup adults.  

My recommendation is to try going to one or two reunions as you might really like it.  If you have completely lost touch with your high school class, call your high school, look on the web or any social media to see if your class has a page or look on social media for a name or two you remember. (The guys are pretty easy as they don't change their name with a change in spouses.)