High School Reunions - Putting the Past In its Place

As a high school teacher, I think I approach reunions differently than those whose last high school experience was long ago. Unlike many of my classmates, I have been able to view my high school days through a new lens – over and over and over. It has changed the way I see my high school years significantly.

When we were in high school, it was the center of our universe. We lived our lives as if the boundaries were just out of our sight and would slip into view in a year or two, revealing the bigger picture of wealth, status, and adulthood. Little victories or setbacks were major events; rivalries, reputations, and relationships were our primary focus.

As we moved away from high school, we look back with a kind of split personality. We know that we were different people then, but we don’t feel like different people now. Some of our memories embarrass us; others are cause for pride or anger. We know that our classmates have grown up, but we secretly believe that, deep down inside, they are the same people who tortured, teased, and tantalized us way back then. We think that, when we reunite, we will magically revert and our adult selves will be replaced with who we were then – and it will all happen all over again. That has not been my experience.

My reunions with my former students are often surprising and satisfying. For them, I am the same as when they sat in my class. The high school, all of it - teachers, classmates, memories, are fixed in a time bubble, unchanged. One student, with whom I spent every day for her four years of high school, returned and, after we had spoken for a while confessed that she wasn’t sure that I would even remember her. When I asked her how she thought I could forget someone with whom I spent so much time, she replied that she was a mouse in high school, no one noticed her. I assured her that she was indeed, noticed. I reminded her of events that she had minimized or even forgotten. I asked her if she still saw herself as a “mouse.” She smiled and said, “Certainly not!”

Reunions are opportunities to repair the past, set it straight, put it in its place and let it go or transform it into a new future. Few of us were the person we wanted to be in high school. That is a good thing. If we reached our peak during our high school glory days, it may have been a long twenty years and be an even longer rest of our lives. For many of us, high school does hold glory memories, which may appear alluring when compared with the darker moments of adult life. The reverse is also true, although we probably either don’t remember it or have it locked into an adolescent emotional time capsule.

My former students are either eager or embarrassed to tell me about their exploits since high school. Some have noted that they did not attend their reunions because they knew their classmates had accomplished so much more than they did. Yet when I ask them about high school friends, they have the same glow of curiosity, the same need to see the adult version of the teenage comrade, the same nostalgic wish to touch the past.

I have attended only one official reunion of my former students, although I have been at countless unofficial reunions. As I drove to a loop bar for the tenth reunion of the class of 1990, I became increasingly anxious. What was I doing there? Why did I feel the need to be an interloper on this event? Even as the party began and I saw only a few familiar faces, I did not feel at ease.

Then, one by one, adults who had been my students came through the door: attorneys, social workers, moms, dads, unemployed guitarists, graduate students, and “I’m not sures.” They were not kids any more, they were people. They were closer to me in both age and place in life than I ever realized. We talked about their high school years and I was privileged to perceptions I had never imagined. Instead of remembering them as the children they were, I now think of them as the grown ups they turned out to be. They turned out really well, I am very proud of them.

We know that the changes since high school are mighty. There is nothing profound in that statement. Yet, the high school kid inside of us screams out that it is not true. He or she says to us, “They are exactly as they were. They will still make fun of me, compete with me, and turn me back into the person they wanted me to be and not who I really am.” It is not true. It is the voice of nervous adolescence speaking.

Our high school reunions afford us the opportunity to come to terms with our teenage years. They provide us with the chance to remake old friendships and transform old enmities. Reunions can provide us with the perspective we need to shepherd our own children through an all new high school landscape. We can finally put our high school experience in its proper place in our lives – and that is not a bad place, but it is not today’s place.