Fear and Loathing at High School Reunions

Our resident baby boomer recently went through a terrifying rite ofpassage called the high school reunion and though there was a story there. Originally we had assigned the piece to a well-known psychologist, hoping we would help shed some light on the intensity of feeling that reunions arouse. In the end the article didn't make any sense to us--or to the psychologist either. Put another way, there didn't seem to be a generalized experience or governing insight that he could devine.

That doesn't mean we're not interested. Instead, we feel there are just a lot of experiences that are absorbing to us in the aggregate sense. So what follows is a semi-representation--male and female, ages 23 to 65. So what do you think, is high school destiny?

--The Editors

#1

A HIGH SCHOOL reunion? What on earth did I want to go back for? Was I even conscious in high school? I'd had outrageously good times and many friends, but none I was interested in seeing over the intervening three decades. My life certainly didn't peak in high school; in fact it went in unforeseen ways, and I didn't want to have to spend my time explaining myself to anyone.

Yet this was to be different. Not a flag-flying Event but a private gathering of, well, "our crowd"--perhaps a hundred or so from a large suburban high school.

The plans grew cozily--a name I hadn't thought of in 30 years would crop up and generate a smile, a memory, a "what the hell is he doing these days." Surprisingly, I was catching reunion fever.

The females--I still can't call us women and we're definitely not girls--were a different matter entirely. Most had disappeared into marriage, maternity, and the 'burbs soon after college (our heads had been molded in the '5Os). But from time to time I'd heard that one or another was divorced, even working, a fate unimaginable to a crop of retired secretaries. A few were reportedly even doing something interesting--an author, a professor.

One by one, the past reconnected, first at a cocktail party the night before. With few exceptions, a rather astonishing crowd. Many were doing amazing things, none more amazing than the dancer with a heart-lung transplant who far into the night mesmerized us all with tales about the donor she never met but truly knew, and whose family she had helped heal. It was an evening like that. No one compared real estate or kids; we went right to the heart. After the whoops of recognition, it turned out we had known one another all along, had always seen in each other the exciting selves that were struggling to be born in those strangely conformist times.

There was only one off-note to the whole evening. A big-time producer--divorced, remarried, profiled in Vogue, who was feeling disconnected from her past and had inadvertently caused the reunion--arrived, attended by a phalanx of four. While the entire crowd was remarkably well-preserved, The Producer was something else. A show-stopping sliver of off-the-shoulder black Lycra (unmistakably designer of the nanosecond) upstaged her ultra-thin frame. The sturdy blond hair was now a pre-Raphaelite cascade (the kinky kind we hated back then), and the straight-on nose had become a demure rise on an updated face. The conversation dipped lightly, I recall, as this apparition appeared, but resumed quickly. She was gone in no time, carried away by shyness, it was said, under her canopy of friends. You couldn't tear the rest of us away.

The next afternoon was It. A giant lawn party on a blazingly hot June day. It started as we parked the car--an ex-beau I hadn't seen since just after college pulled up at the same time. We hugged hard. "I feel like I know you," his wife said graciously. "He talks about you all the time." It was an afternoon like that. Epiphanies of how deeply we had affected one another.

But, man for man, it was the women who had come the farthest. "Tell me your story and I'll tell you mine," the hostess said, pulling me into the shade for the short-order whole-life update. More than 15 years after graduation, she was living the life we had all dreamed of in high school: the husband, the kids, the house. The security. But she had fallen into a deep malaise. It was her husband who had finally suggested she go back to school. She'd always been good in math, and so the desire was born to become an accountant--before she was 40. But the boys were little and needed a caretaker. Full tuition and help at home would strain the family finances, so she decided to ask her father for assistance. His words, as she etched them into my brain: "You're supposed to marry an accountant. Not be one."

So she did it on her own. Accountants, psychologists, songwriters, professors, advertising women--things we'd never dreamed of. Indeed, how far we had come.

The Producer arrived mid-party, alone, clad in a little white tee and black patent-leather pants. I was deep in conversation, and when I turned around again she was gone. But the image stuck.

We had surprised ourselves, we women. We had become something, tasted success. But The Producer was eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. High tea, too. As we came into ourselves, she left the signs of hers behind. We could laugh it off as Hollywood style, but I still wonder if it wasn't simply good- (bad) old-fashioned-woman style. Was she trying to tell us that at the highest levels of success, it is too dangerous for a woman to look too strong? No wonder she felt disconnected. And no wonder she couldn't stay.

--Advertising executive, age 51

#2

LIFE, AT LEAST in the keeping-score department, has always had its ups and downs for me. In junior high I was such a great student and freakishly strong wrestler that my parents thought I wasn't being challenged enough. So off I went to a leading western boarding school which so profoundly depressed me that I gave up sports and reading altogether. The only guys that were below me in class ranking didn't even graduate. No big deal.

Things later took a turn for the better, so much so that when I attended my 15th high school reunion, I won a Flying Wing award for the person whom least was expected of and who did the best. Perhaps it all went to my head since five years later, having been the first millionaire, I was also the first person to go bankrupt.

The interesting thing is that my experience at both reunions was pretty much the same. Which is to say both extremes were equally isolating. With my screaming success, friends kept at a distance, wondering how that guy they knew had made it into the Times and was so obviously on top of the world. Nobody seemed at all pleased, and I was told later that it made their lives seem plodding by contrast.

When I showed up broke five years later, I think everybody thought they would catch what I'd caught--failure as a highly communicable disease. Go figure it.

--Real estate developer, age 38

#3

WHAT SURPRISED ME about my reunion were the physical changes that had occurred in most of us: In 42 years you know there are going to be changes; it's just that it seemed like yesterday that I'd left.

When I walked in to register my roommate was signing in at the desk. I'd lived with him for 2 1/2 years and I didn't even recognize him. But when he called me by my nickname I immediately knew the voice and knew who he was. Sure, there were all those similarities. But what I remembered was my last picture of him. So I looked at him and said, My goodness, I know this man. That's my old roommate. And I thought, Wow, this isn't what I thought it would be. I thought I would immediately recognize everybody. It was only his voice, his inflections, the way he used his hands-if he had a paper bag over his head, I would have known who he he was.

And then I wondered how I looked to the others. I mean, if this was my reaction to them, what were they thinking when they looked at me? I didn't think I'd aged that much. I looked in the mirror every morning and I didn't see all these changes. A few wrinkles here and there and yes the hair's all gray, but did I really change as much as they had?

This happened over and over again. I'd walk up to somebody, look at the name tag, realize who they were, notice they'd put on 100 pounds or something-but always the voice would tip me off. The initial change from that boyish young man I had in my mind to a person who was now much older was just hard for me to get used to. Those 42 years had gone by with a blink of an eye.

Then, throughout the course of the weekend, I think I blended what they used to looked like into what they looked like today. The faces became much more familiar. Perhaps I was seeing them through a filter. As I got to be with them, they all began to look and act like they did when we were together.

--Aeronautical engineer, age 65

#4

WHILE I DIDN'T want to be the one to point it out, not one of our friends really seemed to like each other anymore. In the half-decade since our departure, no cards had been exchanged no phone calls made, no hell-raising college visits had. People whose lives we once didn't miss a day of had all but from our personal geography.

There were about 50 people milling around the bar and I did a double-take at the array of alcohol, forgetting momentarily that we were all old enough to drink now. As our group slowly reunited, I was surprised by how it differed from the last time we were together. Instead of everybody doing the "my-life-can-top-your-life" business, no one really felt the urge to keep score. The ice was mostly broken by talking about old times.

And even this took on a new spin. "Old times" for this crew used to mean "I know you slept with my boyfriend so why don't you just admit it"; but now it switched to happy, feel-good kind of memories. Not exactly tears and hugs but no vicious barbs and subtle digs, either. Just talking about the parties we had, the fun summers, the times we stuck our necks out for each other and weren't sorry we did.

Looking back, no one is really sure when we all melded together again. Maybe the spirit of "us" and "everyone else" returned that Saturday night. Maybe we weren't as far apart as we thought.

-Law student, age 23

#5

THE CLOTHES I wore to my reunion were not the ones I had taken months to choose. Instead, they were more familiar garments that I had thrown on at the last minute, in tears. A half-hour before leaving, I had had a final crisis of confidence. The only single non-mother in my class, I was not leading the impressive life I had planned on back in 1971. And I wasn't up to repeated interrogation about it.

A reunion is a kind of time warp. For 20 years we had all been struggling with our various lives while, in our memories, our classmates remained the same. Why couldn't I approach my reunion as a chance to see old friends and spend an evening out? Why did the prospect of going fill me with a mixture of curiosity and dread that rivaled even that of a blind date?

The fact that I had not found the ideal man was difficult only when viewed through eyes stuck in the past. I wanted to compensate, on that one night, for the lack of a boyfriend in high school. What about the rest of my life, all that I'd accomplished, totally and proudly on my own-didn't that have validity? It's just that, faced with seeing my old companions, I'd begun to relive the pressures that had been placed on us to "have it all."

Which may explain why less than half my class showed up. The inconvenience of travel must not have been worth the anxiety. But, as fate would have it, no one had had a life that came anywhere near my expectations for them. For every explanation I had to give about the absence of Mr. Right, there was an equally awkward divorce story.

I desperately wanted to dance, but no one asked and I hadn't, in 20 years, found the courage to ask a man. But, rather than leaving in tears, I began to rejoice. I was still the wallflower, watching the most popular girls twirling across the floor while I played the cool observer. The difference was that they no longer had the power to make me feel bad about myself, nor was it in any way important. These people were on the dance floor of my past, slowly waltzing their way out of my future.

--Insurance claims manager, age 40

#5

AFTER INITIALLY disposing my invitation, I finally decided to go to my fifth reunion. I couldn't recall telling anyone of the growing realization that I was gay, but the fact that I was conspicuously without girlfriends during my entire stay at school was cause for considerable razzing and marginal suspicion.

So I had a choice. Keep this part of me hidden by cajoling my friend Janice into clinging to my side and making pretend sexual advances, or go stag and lump it. I'd like to say that I chose the latter of my own free will, but Janice got strep throat at the last minute and couldn't go.

The reunion was held in the auditorium, which only made me more nervous. For four years I could never throw a ball in that damn basket if someone held a gun to my head. Now they seemed laughably low, as if some model trainman had built the auditorium from old Lionel parts. I was pleased to find that I had actually grown taller than almost everyone in the class. Slightly more assured but still nervous, I charged for the bar. After two gin and tonics I began to speak to strangers, some of whom used to be my friends.

I didn't know what to say Should I blithely introduce myself as gay, only state it upon a cross-examination, or avoid the fact altogether? I bravely chose to evade all mention of relationships. Full of the strength of that decision I strode forth into the crowd, ready to rattle on about my little accomplishments.

The first person I met was someone I actually knew pretty well. Her name was Tabitha and she used to be in my home room. She smiled as she glanced at me through a tumbler of lemonade. Our conversation went something like this:

"Davy! Oh my God, look at you. You look so conservative. Putting on airs for ye old classmates perhaps?"

"Just wanted to throw them a curve."

"You're funny. Nobody cares, you know."

"Cares about what?"

"Ooh. Drag it out of me. Cares that you're a perverter of men of course."

I had this mad temptation to throw a basketball at her.

-Computer salesman, age 28

#7

I NEVER ATTENDED a reunion because I'm the type that doesn't join and doesn't go and doesn't go back. But I never thought of not going back just because I was dead. Instead of being rich, successful, not bald if you're male, not fat if you're female, and whatever else makes you a topnotch example of 15 or 20 years well spent, you're just dead. What a reason not to show up.

Some of my brushes with death have been the stuff of bad TV, but once I almost died choking on a shrimp, something Lucille Ball might have done much better. I was at a party a few years before my 25th reunion. I was early--I like to get in, get out at those sorts of things. Unfortunately, I ran into someone I'd gone to high school with and we started chatting.

It was then that I scarfed down the shrimp of the living dead. It was hot. Too hot. And big. Having learned my WASP routines, I didn't spit it out. I swallowed it. Big mistake--maybe it took a second, maybe less, for me to realize I was choking to death. Not a welcomed moment of enlightenment.

Just about the time I was trying to swallow, she asked me, "Have you ever been back for any of the reunions?" I opened my mouth wide and a hideous sound I've never made before or since came out. I always knew I hated high school, but I never knew I hated it that much.

Then she said, "Get your hands up!" and did the Heimlich like a sumo wrestler. Wow, what arms, I thought as the shrimp came obligingly up, and I felt as if I'd passed the last and worst of all my high school exams. Yuck.

Then for one long second when her arms were around me pushing on my sternum, I thought of sunlight and young faces. I remembered gym class, a game of field hockey on a crisp, cold day; and I saw her running down the field, intent on a goal. I was looking at someone filled with life, pushing forward at that precious moment before everything really starts. The best years of my life? No way.

I choked rudely for some time, thinking, How embarrassed can I really be about this? Embarrassed enough, but I figured it was no worse than high school.

--Fashion designer, age 43

Photo: Cheerleader from the past ((c) FPG International)

Photo: "Put your head on my shoulder..." ((c) FPG International)

Photo: "Sh-boom, sh-boom. Yadada dadada dadada dadada. Sh-booom, sh-boom. Yadada dadada dadada. Sh-boom!" ((c) Black Box/Index)

Photo: "..They said they found my high school ring, clutched in your fingers tight. Teen angel, can you hear me? Teen angel, can you see me?" ((c) Black Box/Index)