I recently attended my 50th high school reunion -- an "interesting" experience.
This was my first reunion with my classmates over the years. I've received notices for the interim gatherings but it never seemed worth the expense and time to attend any of them. However, the 50th seemed significant somehow -- a milestone worth acknowledging. It also seemed to fit in with my more reflective and nostalgic tendencies associated with retirement.
One thing I learned right away is that the internet has made reunions much easier to promote and to manage. Websites like ClassReport.org, Classmates.com, MyEvent.com allow organizers to display information about the event and to provide biographical and contact information about alumni. (I'm sure that Facebook will soon find a way to supplant these independent venues and make it even easier to do this. For the potential downside, see my cautionary blog about Facebook.) Very slick.
I graduated from South High in Denver. We were the South High Rebels, a designation clearly linked to the Confederacy and the Civil War. On the reunion website was our logo, the profile of a confederate soldier. We were obviously less culturally sensitive in those days (imagine being one of the few Black students at our school during a rally to cheer on our Johnny Reb football team). Just for kicks I went to the current website for South High and found that the "Rebels" term is still used, though the soldier has been replaced by a more neutral block letter "S." The current website also extolls the school's diversity (not a defining characteristic while I was there) and its goal of developing in students "...a sense of civic responsibility to contribute to their global community." Sounds great. I just hope they don't still wave little confederate flags at the rallies like we did.
Since I really didn't keep in touch with very many of my classmates after graduating, I was curious to read the biographical information posted on the website. I learned three things from this. First, I couldn't remember most of the people in my class (this might be due in part to the sheer numbers involved -- there were 700 in my graduating class). Second, of the ones I could remember a disturbingly large proportion of them were dead. Third, the people I recalled most fondly were often those with whom I had also attended junior high, where we were "tracked" -- the same group of kids went from class to class for three years and we got to know each other very well.
At the event itself we were given id tags with our yearbook photo and name. This was very helpful, because most people didn't look much like they did in high school. Even when I could place either the face or the name, I was often at a loss to remember the context in which I knew the person. It was an exhausting cognitive effort to bridge a gap of 50+ years when there was no connective thread between then and now, nothing in the middle. By the end of it I came to the painful realization that as emotionally charged as those days may have been at the time, they have little relevance for my life today. Revisiting memories of those times was actually a little depressing, because it didn't reveal any significant truths about who I am today (as I thought it might) and instead presented a puzzling and disjointed picture of someone I hardly recognized.
I realize that for many people high school memories are very positive and that reunions are a joyful and heartwarming way of maintaining meaningful relationships. My high school experience was not so great. It was a period in my life of great uncertainty, social isolation, and near-calamitous life choices. Somehow I pulled out of it in time, and I now think high school was something I survived, not something I enjoyed. The reunion did what I guess it should have -- it reminded me that now is the most important time of my life, not the past.
This was my first reunion with my classmates over the years. I've received notices for the interim gatherings but it never seemed worth the expense and time to attend any of them. However, the 50th seemed significant somehow -- a milestone worth acknowledging. It also seemed to fit in with my more reflective and nostalgic tendencies associated with retirement.
One thing I learned right away is that the internet has made reunions much easier to promote and to manage. Websites like ClassReport.org, Classmates.com, MyEvent.com allow organizers to display information about the event and to provide biographical and contact information about alumni. (I'm sure that Facebook will soon find a way to supplant these independent venues and make it even easier to do this. For the potential downside, see my cautionary blog about Facebook.) Very slick.
I graduated from South High in Denver. We were the South High Rebels, a designation clearly linked to the Confederacy and the Civil War. On the reunion website was our logo, the profile of a confederate soldier. We were obviously less culturally sensitive in those days (imagine being one of the few Black students at our school during a rally to cheer on our Johnny Reb football team). Just for kicks I went to the current website for South High and found that the "Rebels" term is still used, though the soldier has been replaced by a more neutral block letter "S." The current website also extolls the school's diversity (not a defining characteristic while I was there) and its goal of developing in students "...a sense of civic responsibility to contribute to their global community." Sounds great. I just hope they don't still wave little confederate flags at the rallies like we did.
Since I really didn't keep in touch with very many of my classmates after graduating, I was curious to read the biographical information posted on the website. I learned three things from this. First, I couldn't remember most of the people in my class (this might be due in part to the sheer numbers involved -- there were 700 in my graduating class). Second, of the ones I could remember a disturbingly large proportion of them were dead. Third, the people I recalled most fondly were often those with whom I had also attended junior high, where we were "tracked" -- the same group of kids went from class to class for three years and we got to know each other very well.
At the event itself we were given id tags with our yearbook photo and name. This was very helpful, because most people didn't look much like they did in high school. Even when I could place either the face or the name, I was often at a loss to remember the context in which I knew the person. It was an exhausting cognitive effort to bridge a gap of 50+ years when there was no connective thread between then and now, nothing in the middle. By the end of it I came to the painful realization that as emotionally charged as those days may have been at the time, they have little relevance for my life today. Revisiting memories of those times was actually a little depressing, because it didn't reveal any significant truths about who I am today (as I thought it might) and instead presented a puzzling and disjointed picture of someone I hardly recognized.
I realize that for many people high school memories are very positive and that reunions are a joyful and heartwarming way of maintaining meaningful relationships. My high school experience was not so great. It was a period in my life of great uncertainty, social isolation, and near-calamitous life choices. Somehow I pulled out of it in time, and I now think high school was something I survived, not something I enjoyed. The reunion did what I guess it should have -- it reminded me that now is the most important time of my life, not the past.
