Recently a friend of mine posted pictures from her husband’s 20 year class reunion on Facebook. I went the same school as her husband but he is a year older than I am. I looked at these pictures for some time and was really surprised by all the fond memories they conjured up for me.
I generally describe my time in high school as akward, lonely and sad. For that reason I have avoided all my past high school class reunions and have gone as far as to say that I wouldn’t go if they paid me. Why pay money to see people I didn’t like 20 years ago? But I attended my husband’s 25 year reunion last year and had a really good time. Years ago I attended my then-husbands 10 year reunion and had a great time there too. Why? There are a lot of possible reasons but I suspect a big part of it was that no one there knew me. No one was going to remember anything dumb I did in the third grade or make fun of me for being tall.
I had a long talk with my husband about this topic last night in the car. He has been on the planning committee for several of his class’s reunions so he has a totally different perspective on them than I do. I was talking- at length- about how much I’ve changed since high school. He pointed out that my classmates probably had too. While a couple unpleasant encounters in recent years have shown me that 2 of my classmates have NOT changed, there are still 44 others that may very well have. And I will never know if I don’t at least say “hi” to them.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I get that invitation next year. But I know that I will look at it differently than I’ve looked at the ones I’ve thrown into the trash before.
Becky, I went to my 15 year, expecting to stay for about 2 hours and stayed all night. I opened my mind up and realized that not only had I changed, but so had many of my classmates. You're right in that there are some who haven't and never will, but you could be missing out on a really good time. We've even gotten together 2x now since last summer and had a blast each time. You never know if you don't at least try!
Well, you'll have me as entertainment!