Every five or 10 years, like it or not, your past comes calling.
In the mail you find an invitation to your high school reunion.
Every five or 10 years, like it or not, your past comes calling. In the mail you find an invitation to your high school reunion.
Over the last four and a half decades, I’ve noticed something about class reunions. The first couple aren’t a whole lot different than high school except now it’s Judgment Day: who scored the most impressive job and the highest salary, who made the best catch in the matrimony department and who was already losing their hair.
Later reunions, I’m happy to say, are markedly better. They are even, well … fun. And by your 40th, which I attended five years ago, we’d all come to an important conclusion: Hey! We’re just ecstatic to be alive! I mean, seriously; at that point nobody even bothers to suck in their tummies anymore.
So when the committee that had arranged every reunion since graduation announced they were done, seven of my former classmates and I took over the job.
Now the other committee members still live in our Colorado hometown. Being the absentee constituent I took over functions that could be handled from a distance. I became the resident writer, photographer and Internet communicator while the others sought event venues, sent out notices and the like. And when our 45th reunion was still several months away, I traveled to Colorado to meet the group at a small diner in our hometown. We had some details to iron out.
Of course I couldn’t expect to meet my former classmates after all these years without some kind of drama, which arrived in the form of the mother of all colds. It was “storm-of-the-century” bad. My eyes were puffy; my chest hurt; even my hair hurt.
But 9 a.m. sharp on the morning of the meeting, we went to work. Final decisions regarding budget and itinerary had to be made. Consisting of three women and five men, the committee was divided along gender lines, and we needed to move beyond this behavior since it was so, um … high school-like.
Now some of the “boys” on the committee couldn’t have cared less about many aspects of the planning. Didn’t read their e-mails. Sometimes came to meetings, sometimes didn’t. A couple of them are tough sons-of-guns who work hard doing ranching and farming things. Super guys but not the sort who’d get on their high horses about whether we were going to serve peanuts in pink frilly cups. Which we weren’t, but you get my drift.
One of the ranchers, Tim (names have been changed to protect the guilty), arrived a little late to the meeting. Entering the diner where we were meeting, I hadn’t seen Tim since we were 18 (apparently he’d missed other reunions) so I expected some changes. With a familiar sparkle in his eye he gave me a good hug and said, “I don’t know who you are.” Huh? Well, who did he think I was? And was he always in the habit of hugging strange women? I reminded him of my identity and he said, “You had dark hair.” Well. So I did, and so did you, Kemosabe, I thought, noting the gray locks sprouting from beneath his baseball cap.
I sat next to Tim’s non-identical twin, Tommy, who is famous for picking up everybody’s chit at breakfast meetings. I’d ordered toast ($.81) so I didn’t feel I was giving up too much feminine independence if he wanted to buy my breakfast.
Linda, a retired college instructor with the chops to prove it, led the meeting. By now I was nearing death due to sinus drowning, hearing only Charlie-Brown-like snippets of the discussion:
Linda: Blah, honk, whaah …
Cathy (semi-interrupting): Do we have the dinner budget yet?
Linda:(checking her agenda, which none of us student failures had remembered to bring): “That’s later, Cathy. Is everyone OK with Friday’s change of venue? The mixer is no longer at Tommy’s.”
Tommy: “I don’t give a s***.” (Guess that’s settled)
Linda: WaaBlah, blah …
Me (swimming up from murky sinus depths): “Is the reservation form I drafted OK?”
Tim: “Yeah. It’s beautiful.”
Linda: “Tim, you didn’t see the reservation form. Your e-mail isn’t working.”
Tim: “Yeah, whatever, it’s still beautiful.”
Tommy: “I don’t give a s***.”
Lonny (shrugs, rolls his eyes and continues eating his way through a cinnamon roll sporting a candle, a tribute to his birthday last weekend)
Cathy: “Do we have the dinner budget yet?”
Linda: “Shut up, Cathy.”
Naw, I’m kidding; it was a great meeting and we nailed it. My old classmates are rock stars. And as far as I know, Tommy still doesn’t give a s***.
