Reunion Gratitude and Growing Up: A Reflection

Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again. That is a good thing. Recently, I gathered with many of my college theatre classmates. I didn’t go to the university events. I didn’t go to a football game or tailgate or anything like that. I went to a small party at a classmate’s home as I have done every five or so years. There were about thirty or forty theatre alumni there. It was better than going back to our college home, thirty-five years ago. 

I chaired two of my high school reunions. I like reunions. Yet, there is something very special and different about this particular reunion and these people. We competed with each other in college. We may have continued that at our early reunions, but I don’t remember that. 

What I do know is, for me, that need to compete is gone. I look at my classmates and marvel and celebrate their outstanding work, spaning theatre and many other fields. I delight in their company in a way I did not in college. I appreciate them like I never could have imagined when we were in school years ago. Some of the folks who came were people with whom I spent a great deal of time. Some I knew in passing, and now I wish I had spent more time with them. 

Like my other reunions, some of my closest friends were unable to attend. None of the people present were at my wedding or my children’s mitzvahs. In other reunions, that might have been awkward or disappointing. That was not the case at all; it was an ideal chance to catch up, renew relationships, and celebrate.

I feel so grateful and fortunate to have second and third and fourth chances to meet these people. I am so grateful to the committee that worked hard to preserve our bond. Their work has allowed me to see so much more than a “reunion” version of our college selves. Each time we gather, I get a better glimpse of the more complex and real people we have become. 

At nineteen and twenty, I couldn’t get past myself. I was stuck and confused and struggling. I still am, but in my fifties the challenges are different. I am enjoying the confusion, choosing the struggle, and working hard to get out of myself and out of my own (and others) way. That was not true thirty-five years ago. Now, I have an opportunity to go beyond my college inadequacies, to present myself as I am now. To laugh at and, yes, even apologize for the sins of my college past. 

We hear about coming to terms with the past. We talk about forgiveness and putting the past in its place. At my reunion, I got to complement the past. I got to reconnect with my classmates, some of whom I have gotten to know far better in the years since college. And I appreciate them more each time I see them. 

This reunion made me long to see these folks again. I see many on Facebook and that whets my appetite. It enables me to see my classmates more fully and feel at least a little connected.

Everyone was not present. There were many people who were missed, talked about, or joined us via video call. While many of us have attended many of these reunions, it is wonderful when faraway faces are able to join us. When they are not, they are sincerely missed. These evenings are punctuated with the question, “What is happening with…?” 

I was not in love with everyone from my theatre program in college. However, that is meaningless now. Our relationship is now about a past we are rewriting, revising, revisiting, and renewing. 

College was never this good. Now it is. 

Be The Friend

Remember those childhood friendship insecurities: With whom do you sit at lunch, who says “hi” to you in the hall, who can you call and who can call you? There were people who couldn’t be friends at school but were fine being friends one on one. Navigating the friendship maze was often harrowing and disheartening. Sometimes, it seems like we have brought those friendship complexities to Facebook.

Of course, I am only friends with people I actually know on Facebook. The issue is not becoming Facebook friends with strangers. The issue is accepting or, more importantly, reaching out to people, often with whom I have a history.

What do you do when the person who hurt you in middle school sends you a friendship request on Facebook? What about people who never really talked to you? What about the acquaintances? Or those with whom you had a falling out?

As I look at the items on my newsfeed and see my friends’ new “friends,” I often ask myself, “Would it be okay for me to befriend that person?” Is requesting Facebook friendship more than saying “hi” in the hall? It certainly could be like sitting down at someone’s lunch table. If I didn’t have those privileges then, should I request them now?

Yes. Yes, I should. More than that, when I ask myself, “Is it okay to send a friendship request to this person?” I have come to the conclusion that I should always err on the side of doing so.

How do you feel when you get the notice that someone “wants to be your friend?” While sometimes there is surprise and sometimes there is that sinking “found” feeling, I’ll bet that most of the time it feels pretty good. It is like being included in the game at recess. Why not share that feeling?

What is the cost of befriending these people? If they are people I knew and are part of my past, what harm could come to me if I add them to my friend list? If they are Facebook over-posters, I can hide them from my wall without any repercussions. If I am crossing some line, then they do not have to accept my friendship invitation.

We also have to put the past in its place. Are you the same person you were when you were going to school? Would you like people to judge you today for your behavior ten, twenty or thirty years ago? When I think back to my childhood (or even my twenties), I am both proud and embarrassed. As a high school teacher, I have daily reminders of how our school years help us to figure out who we want to become. I made mistakes, lacked skills, and stepped on toes. I have forgiven myself for my past inadequacies and errors; I think I can do the same for other people.

Friendships can be renewed through Facebook. While I agree that Facebook may serve as a poor substitute for real substantive contact, it can just as easily be a way to reconnect and foster adult friendships. Facebook friendships have been the catalyst for reunions, travel visits and nostalgic phone calls, all of which are very positive.

I am not endorsing becoming friends with every person you have ever known. However, when you see that name on your newsfeed or in a friend list and you ask yourself, “Would it be okay for me to befriend that person?” ask yourself how you would feel if that person befriended you? If it would make you feel good, even just a little, do it. Be the friend.

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.