Notes on My High School MyLife
By Nancy Kalish, Ph.D, MyLife.com Relationship Expert
I just returned to California from my high school reunion in New Jersey. A school reunion starts long before the event. As soon as it is announced, the time machine begins working.
First came The Reaction: Will I go? Who else is going? If the school reunion is posted online, it is easy enough to skim down a list of classmates to see who is planning to attend. The list is seductive. Once I saw the list of my classmates and knew I could send them email, I began my journey back to the 60's.
I learned how successful my peers had become. Like me, many of my friends had published books. My friends became doctors, venture capitalists, an architect, hard workers in their communities who were able to retire young, researchers, a famous political cartoonist whose art has graced the covers of The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, a woman who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize -- and our football captain became the principal of our high school!
I widened my emailing circle beyond my close friends. Did I have the courage, even as a successful adult, to contact the president of our class, the jocks, the student voted Most Likely to Succeed? I took a deep breath and sent the email. And they answered.
Soon there was a list and everyone was emailing each other, pouring out feelings about high school and confessions about dysfunctional families of origin.
There was one friend who would be missing from this reunion, Margie was my best friend, and she died of cancer in 1992. I knew this reunion would be hard for me, without her. I brought a copy of her memorial service booklet; she had put it together herself, during the last year of her life, and it contained articles and poems that she had written about her illness and about her work as a psychologist. I placed it on a table, along with the books my classmates and I had published, for her friends to read and think of her. Marge concludes one poem by saying that if she dies, she wants to be missed. She is missed.
Other members of my class have passed away, too. There is an urgency to this reunion, to see each other before it is too late. Surprisingly, no one in my class died in Viet Nam, but two classmates died by being run over by garbage trucks.
Of course there were the preparations to consider. Some of the women went on diets, changed their hair, or whitened their teeth; we bought dresses and then shoes to go with the dresses. I booked my flight to New Jersey.
I stayed with my parents -- in a senior citizens' housing project -- and my father drove me to the reunion. Very strange. I felt like I had regressed to a fifteen year old girl. My father didn't make this any easier: "You have a 10 p.m. curfew, no exceptions for reunions," he joked. He was joking, wasn't he??
Despite all my careful planning and my desire to look good and feel confident, the weather intervened. New Jersey was having a record-breaking week of heat and humidity. My parents did not have (working) air conditioning. I was trying to dry my hair for the reunion, but with the hot air from the hair dryer and the humidity, my hair would not dry. And my makeup wasn't working, either. I was late! I went with damp hair (and later discovered that many of my friends did, too. It's a New Jersey thing). I was 20 minutes late and very frazzled when I finally arrived!
I walked in and tried to find a familiar face (or at least a familiar name tag). But I was not standing alone for very long. "Remember me?" said a kind-looking man. "Uh, no." I confessed. I looked at his name tag and still didn't know who he was. "I sat in front of you in Homeroom 38, and I had the biggest crush on you. But I was shy, and I never talked to you. I knew your parents' license plate and where you lived. I guess I was kind of a stalker, but I was too shy to talk to you." That is so sweet. I do reunion research; I knew these confessions happen -- but to me? Even a reunion researcher can be surprised at a school reunion! Of course he had long ago moved on, and he was there with his wife.
I used to be shy in high school, too. But at the reunion, I felt free to talk to old friends and even classmates I never knew back then. Another surprise: two of the women had read my book, Lost & Found Lovers, and were thrilled to see me, the "famous author." From my point of view, I was just an ordinary classmate (with frizzy hair), but I admit that it felt good when they wanted to have their photos taken with me.
The food was bland, the reunion company didn't provide enough memory books to go around, the music was completely forgettable, and I was self-conscious about my thrown-together appearance. But I was with my friends again, after so many years, and I was overjoyed. Time did not lessen those bonds at all. And my old friends didn't care that my hair was frizzy.
Just as the reunion began long before the event, it didn't end at the conclusion of the evening. A friend generously opened her home the following day to the 25 class members, and their spouses, who were in the classes for accelerated learners; she called the event Geekfest. Some classmates remained at Geekfest until 3 a.m. We never ran out of things to talk about from our past and present lives.
We have vowed to stay in touch by email, phone, and visits, and I hope we do! I am back in California, but I long for the Jersey Shore.
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