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| Figure 1: Time travel would make a reunion worth it. |
I did, once. It wasn't bad, but Peggy Sue Got Married it was not. If there's no magical time travel, what's the point?
But then I got a message from a person I went to high school with, since this is one of the big zero-ending years. They're planning a reunion, and apparently they had a hard time finding me.
They told me to sign in to this place on Facebook, and it was like a portal to another realm. It really did feel like falling physically into a blue spiral to another time.
This space is filled with all these people I have not seen and mostly have not thought of in decades. It was as though they were all living in an alternate world where high school was still going on, even though they all seem to be perfectly nice adults with jobs and kids and everything.
The people were all talking with each other and remembering things that I had no recollection of, like teachers and classes.
And the people who ran the high school are running this space, too. The same people who were on lists of most popular, or athletes, or cheerleaders, or honor society: they're all there. The "most likely to succeed" lists and things like that: they're posted there, too. That's what I mean by time standing still.
It was just weird to me. It's as though they've been carrying on their own lives in real life and also their high school lives in this alternate space all this time, and I have only now discovered it.
I'm not trying to criticize this, truly, but it's made me think. Although I belonged to organizations back then, the high school wasn't especially interested in me. Thanks to my mother's insistence that only stupid people bothered to do homework or study, I didn't get the academic trophies, although I did really well on state tests.
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| Figure 2. Undine in high school |
I felt somewhat on the periphery then. But in my life as it is now, in the work I do, I don't feel on the periphery.
I think I'm going to let that alternate world go on by itself and skip its festivities.
What about you? Do you go to high school reunions?
6 comments:
OMG. I remember that movie.
Love that high school pic!
I have not gone to a reunion either; my 30th is this year (????!!!) and I would not be inclined to go for exactly the reasons you outline. I have a vague memory of and resemblance to High School Gwinne, and there are days I see her very clearly in my own teen, who has now decided to wear all black every day and hang with the theater kids (been there, done that). There are few people I'd like to see again, and they are the people I have kept up with anyway. I'd be more inclined to go to a college reunion, or grad school (but that's sort of what AWP is for...)
I went to one, I think it was 10 years? A whole lot of people were showing pictures of their kids and talking about their divorces. The saddest were the people for whom HS was the high point of their lives.
The one bright spot: a man who'd been sort of a sad sack in HS (nice guy, but sad, mopey) was there, looking fabulous, and he said, at some point, that he'd come out (as gay) and the world got a whole lot better for him. I was so happy for him!
I'm far from the area now, and haven't felt any desire to go back. I'm not in touch with anyone, and the people I might like to see probably aren't the people who go.
Never been. I have friends from HS and we keep up pretty well, and as for the rest . . . I'm easy to find if anyone ever wanted to find me. One of my friends from HS went to a reunion a few years ago, and said it was fun catching up with people and they'd all seemed to turn out pretty well. I was happy to get what mild gossip there was, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. I have no idea about fb groups and the like. When, a few times, I have idly searched for people with distinctive names, they seem to be doing about what I'd expect (ex. athlete now running a municipal athletics dept, artist > artist).
I live across the ocean from my HS, so no. Very rarely, someone will find me online and send me an email. Apparently they are all on Facebook (I'm not). I have no interest in anyone over there, TBH. My BFF from high school died at age 31 from a heart condition; if she were still alive, I am sure I'd visit more often and give more of shit about what's going on in my ancestral homeland, but as it is, I just don't. *shrug* Successful integration after immigration involves a certain level of bridge burning. Like, all of them.
OT I have a writing article for you: on Vivian Gornick in the New Yorker.
Quite interesting. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/vivian-gornick-is-rereading-everyone-including-herself
gwinne--it's actually pretty sweet that LG is now dressing & acting like Gwinne 2! I agree, though, about seeing everyone else.
Bardiac--that's what you want to see--people coming into themselves or coming out and being happier than they ever were. I feel more of a connection to the place than to the people.
Dame Eleanor--I thought I was easy to find (Google) but was told that I wasn't. "Mild gossip" sounds like just about the right amount of connection.
xykademiqz--you're smart not to be on Facebook. What you said about "a certain level of bridge building"--in a much milder fashion, that's what this feels like.
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