Class acts

In the mail the other day: A letter announcing my mother’s upcoming 40th high school reunion. On Facebook, a group recruiting attendees already has 77 members – about four times the number of students in my graduating class.

She took us to the family-friendly bits of her 30th, and it was just like the movies: They agonized over outfits, had to wear name tags decorated with their yearbook photos, talked about who had and hadn’t changed, who had been the coolest, the most popular, the most aloof. And they had fun.

My parents-in-law attended a 40th class reunion last year, and we’re still hearing tales of their bar-hopping, Beatles-jamming, gossip-igniting good time. The most outrageous stories seem to take place in a 15-passenger van, something I will take care to avoid should I ever find myself running around with a group of my high school friends again.

For awhile after I graduated, a stop at the local gas station – our singular watering hole for cars and people – constituted a mini-reunion. But nearly a decade later, between the time I left and returned, many of my former classmates moved off,  if only to the next town.

If we ever get together for a planned reunion, the invitation will be a flyer posted around town, likely announcing a picnic at the ballpark for graduates from 1998-2005. That would include me and two of my four siblings – my sister, who was one year behind me, and my brother, who was among our school’s last 14 graduates – and could amount to more than 77 people, definitely a crowd.

If he would go, I’d have my husband’s to look forward to. He isn’t too eager, as his senior year was the only year he attended his alma mater (a big school with lots more than 18 graduates). From where he stands that makes for a lackluster reunion – from my perspective, that makes it anxiety-free entertainment. But traumatizing and boring are possibilities, too; it’s hard to forecast.

As it turns out, I’ll get my chance in October. On Friday I had a meeting with a former professor about a reunion I’ll definitely be attending, not to mention planning, for a gathering of past recipients of the fellowship that I have to thank for my bachelor’s degree (and, perhaps, for my husband, whom I met as we prepared to interview for the same award). Between 50 and 100 of us will get together to celebrate its 20-year mark. It’ll be my chance to deliberate over what to wear to the cocktail party, what to say over dinner, what accomplishments I might learn about, how to catch up quickly on years of news.

But those years are less distant than the ones I spent in high school, where I knew my classmates more as kids than adults. Half of us started kindergarten together and by graduation time shared 13 years of funny stories. Josh used to pee outside during kindergarten recess; Tiffany’s sprayed-to-perfection hair caught fire during the Christmas program in fifth grade; Paul was always afraid of turtles; I was always afraid of the ball. (Except in seventh grade gym. We’ll always have croquet.)

I marvel that someone has maintained a list of mailing addresses for my mother’s class of 1970. Our school never had a Web site or a newsletter. Casual waves and other local sightings were the extent of alumni tracking. Now Facebook is always ready with a virtual reunion. I wonder if the genuine article is destined for the social endangerment list?