Karla Araujo“What are you thinking?” texts my friend of 53 years.
“About what?” I reply.
“The reunion,” she says.
“I’m not,” I type.
My response is immediate and firm. I’ve seen social media posts about our high school’s 50th reunion planned for early fall, a few months away. We’d attended our 20th reunion and, while it was fun, I feel no great desire to reconnect with most other classmates. Sure, I’ve kept up with a handful. But, to me, Facebook has become an effective substitute for in-person gatherings. I can see what people look like (larger and more wrinkled), where they live, their marital status, grandchildren, pets, health problems, and uninvited political views.
Is there really a good reason to drive five hours round-trip to the Washington, DC, suburbs where I grew up? I have few fond memories of high school. A transplant from New Jersey in mid-junior high, I’d felt untethered, drifting among the cheerleaders and jocks, to the brainiacs, finally landing in a haze of pot smoke and Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, my newfound friends sporting long locks, tattered denim and Army fatigue jackets.
Was I feeling nostalgic? Not particularly. I’d viewed high school as nothing more than a mandatory passage to college. And college? A mandatory passage to the real life I was in a hurry to embrace.
Every few weeks my girlfriend texts again: “Any new thoughts?”
“Nope,” I reply.
Then: “I’m thinking about just going to the bar event on Friday night. What do you think?”
She catches me at a weak moment. I’ve been mulling over the same idea. As a writer, I’ve always been intrigued by human motivation. Why do some people get so excited about revisiting their past? What do they hope to gain by attending a reunion? An opportunity to compare how we’ve weathered the decades? How our fates measure up to others? I’ve occasionally wondered who I really was in my teens, how my internal sense of self meshed with how my peers saw me. Could I somehow finally grasp the ghostly girl I was in 1974?
“Let’s do it!” I reply, typing quickly before I change my mind. We arrange hotel rooms not far from the Elk’s Lodge that will host the opening night. I’ve never been in an Elk’s Lodge. I’ve never known an Elk. I’m already bubbling with anticipation.
My girlfriend and I meet in the lobby to head out for a drink and early dinner. We haven’t seen each other in 15 years and only once before that post-graduation. But there’s no awkwardness. We huddle over cocktails and time melts away.
“Do we have to go?” I ask. My friend nods, although I think I detect a slight hesitation. We’re basking in the glow of good martinis and rekindled camaraderie.
Less than an hour later we stroll into the Elks Lodge, a surprisingly pleasant venue. It’s filled with people who look like us: just past middle age, clinging to memories of Winston cigarettes, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, bell bottoms, Watergate, and Walter Cronkite’s weeknight reporting of the controversial Vietnam War.
We find a pack of our old friends and exchange hugs. “What have you been doing for the past 50 years?” the common refrain. Somehow it’s not as cringey as I expected it to be. I’m caught up in a wave of – yes, nostalgia. I remember sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet these “kids” at the park, to “cruise” our hometown in Ford Mustangs and Plymouth Dusters.
I’m too busy squinting at nametags to worry about who I might have been. I realize that 50 years post-graduation, we’re all the same. No one is “popular” anymore. No one is especially cool. There are no cliques here. Age is a great equalizer. We’re tall, short, ample, thin. Some of us are fighting cancer. Some of us have already lost. The 29 names on the “In Memoriam” list are haunting, a reminder that life is fragile. The football players, hippies, and MIT grads have turned into landscapers, car dealers, and college professors. And we’re all here tonight, not so much celebrating who we were in 1974 but that we survived to reunite so many decades later.