Ditching The Reunion

Ditching The Reunion

family-reunion

I was not cool in high school.

Actually, let me phrase that: I was the antithesis of cool in high school. As a band geek and academic all-star with a penchant for putting my foot in my mouth, it really isn’t all that surprising that as my senior year was drawing to a close, the number of people who considered me a friend was hovering around single digits. After we graduated (and I was subsequently dumped by my girlfriend four days later), I spent virtually the entire summer that followed either at work or at home. There were no social gatherings or last hurrahs. The high point of my high school experience was winning the costume contest during our autumn “Pumpkin Pops” concert dressed in a homemade “Super Senior” outfit. REPEAT: MY BEST DAY IN HIGH SCHOOL CONSISTED OF PLAYING MY TRUMPET IN GIRLS’ TRACK TIGHTS AND MY BATH TOWEL TIED AROUND MY NECK.

But this isn’t meant to be a woe-is-me type of an article. I’ve been fortunate enough to keep in touch with a handful of people from those years (some of whom are my fellow Rookers), and my absolute disdain for secondary school certainly played a part in making the most out of my collegiate experience. The years go on, the negative feelings fade, and sometimes it all seems like a hormone-infused series of misconstrued memories. And then one day, an invitation to one’s ten-year (vomit) reunion arrives, evoking the only appropriate response there can be in this instance –

“Oh, FUCK those guys.”

Think of every TV show or movie you’ve ever seen that deals with a high school reunion as part of its plot. Is there ever an instance where old acquaintances are remembered fondly, where a group of friends can’t wait to reconnect with others from their past? Or do the protagonists mainly return for some sort of revenge or ego-fueling pissing contest? The question is never “What’s everyone been up to?”; instead, it’s “Who am I better than?”, or conversely, “How has this person become better than me?”. We are a judging, vindictive lot, we spurned 16-year-olds.

Of course, fictional characters are by no means a measuring stick for what goes on in real life. Surely there are people who consider those four years to be amongst the best of their lives; I just don’t know any of them. So when the Facebook event emerged and the responses started piling in, I poured myself a large glass of Haterade and –

Wait…what the hell? NO ONE IS GOING?

I can’t say that I know much about high school reunion attendance trends, but it seems slightly amazing that out of a class of nearly 500 students, less than 80 tickets to the event were sold before the cutoff date. Maybe I’m naive. But for every one person who decided to go, SIX decided they wanted no part of it. Looking at it through a darker lens: 85% of my former classmates STILL don’t want to hang out with me.

Dammit, not again.

Truth be told, I did see this coming. I ran into the sibling of an old friend who relayed the message that he wouldn’t be attending because “he didn’t like anyone the same year as him.” But…I thought you liked me? In reality, what happens in these situations, like many memories over a long span of time, is we recall a generalized tone of a period rather then the specifics. Was high school a negative experience? Generally, yes. Were there people there who were unnecessarily condescending or catty, whose very existence was an insult to humanity? Very much so. But were there days where we felt invincible, or friends whose smiles we won’t soon forget? Begrudgingly, yes as well. I’d venture to guess there are actually dozens of former classmates with whom we’d all enjoy reconnecting, whether or not we’d actually like to admit it. Extrapolating a little further, given a decade a growth and life experience, there very well could be scores more who in the evening’s interactions would evolve from a teenage afterthought to a legitimate hangout buddy. It’s one thing to remember the dickwad who sat next to you in first period biology; it’s a completely different thing to have a beer and a conversation with the man he’s become. Have you spent any time with a tenth-grader recently? THEY ARE AWFUL. So with all that in mind, realizing the biases of our recollections, why the dismissive attitude towards the reunion?

To be frank – friendships require effort from both parties, and when it comes down to it, if we haven’t spent any time in the last ten years trying to involve one another in our lives, three hours of on and off small talk in a restaurant isn’t going to change any of that.Hey, remember that time we graduated and then made no effort whatsoever to keep in touch despite the creation of multiple social media outlets designed to do exactly that AND the fact that we lived less than ten miles from one another during every school vacation? Yeah, me too! If I wanted you at my wedding, I would have invited you there. If I wanted to talk to you, I would have dialed your number. I’m not going to slog through arduous social interactions with people I won’t speak to again just to find that one diamond in the rough that will invite me out on the town next month. Cost-benefit analysis, kiddos. At this juncture, we are what we are. There’s nothing wrong with that.

So no, I will not be attending the reunion this weekend. The fact that I’m on the opposite coast of the actual event doesn’t help, but I’m pretty sure my response would be the same even if I lived in an apartment above the banquet hall in which it’s taking place. This is by no means a knock of my former classmates (okay, it is a knock on some of them), it’s just the reality of the situation.

Also, there’s this girl who was dumb as rocks that just managed to graduate from law school, and I do not want to hear her go on about that.

Andrew Rose

About Andrew Rose

Andrew Rose is a writer and editor for Rookerville. He also manages a travel blog for his friends and family. His book, “Seizure Salad”, is a work of fiction - not in that it is a tale of fantasy, but in that it does not actually exist.

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