Reunion

This past weekend my high school graduating class had their 10-year reunion. I remember when my aunt Stephanie went for her 10-year reunion to Pennsylvania and she seemed so...not old...so grown-up. And now here I am...is it possible that I'm as grown-up as she was? The reunion committee sent out this picture of all those that were there on Saturday night, and I have spent a good portion of today obsessing over the picture.

I've known over half of them since we entered kindergarten in 1984. I haven't spoken to a single one of them since we left high school in 1997. And yet I am desperate to know what they've been up to for the last 10 years. I've been having conversations with them in my head all day, asking where they've been, when they got married, how many children they have, have they heard from so-and-so, etc. etc.

Several of those people were so badly made-fun-of and excluded during our entire schooling that I can't imagine why they would show up to a reunion. Are they there to prove that they have moved past their era of geek-dom. Were they so pure-hearted that they just didn't realize that people were making fun of them? Or does 10 years just erase all the hard-feelings they might have had?

The popular girls look just the same--picture-perfect in their attire, hair and make-up. The girl who has been overweight since kindergarten is still overweight and confident in herself. The goth girl is still goth. The stoner still looks pretty stoned. The boy we all thought was gay really is. And the high school sweethearts got married and organized the reunion. And other than putting on a few pounds here and there, almost everyone looks exactly the same as I remember them.

There are others whose absence got me thinking as much as the sight of others. Where are my two best friends, Anne and Sarah? Where is my high school boyfriend and his wife who still live in the town where we grew up? Where is Matt, the only friend I've kept in touch with since graduation, albeit very sporatically?

I was asked to send in a picture of me and my family for the reunion book, and I looked for the best picture of me I could find so that they wouldn't think I'm always as overweight and downtrodden as I look in the pictures since Macy was born. Why does it matter what they think anymore? But I found myself wanting them all to think I was doing well. That I'm not the snob they all thought I was in high school, that I was just extremely shy and insecure. I always felt out-of-place in school, and I found myself wondering if I'd still feel that way in that group. I wondered if they'd look down on me for not finishing college. Would they like my husband and think my kids are cute? What is it about a high school reunion that causes such angst?

Here is a group of people who were tossed together as kids into a tiny school system where we spent 5 days a week, 36 weeks of the year for 13 years playing and learning side by side, who went our separate ways after graduation and then chose to get together again for an evening to try to catch up on the last 10 years. It seems a silly tradition, but I'm sad I missed out on it.