It’s been 40 years this month since I graduated from high school. I don’t remember a lot about the big day, other than wearing a sweaty polyester gown over a nice dress I bought for the occasion. We lined up by height, so I was one of the last ones to walk across the stage. We were told not to throw our hats at the end of the ceremony, probably because some poor student got an eye poked many years ago. Some of us threw them anyway. There was a lot of crying before and after the ceremony, almost like someone had died, but I think it was because deep down it was starting to hit us what a big deal it was to grow up and leave home. I ate my weight in tiny ham sandwiches and party mints in the days that followed, as I dropped in at friends’ homes to celebrate and talk about what we were sure we’d be doing with the rest of our lives.
I grew up in a small town with a graduating class of 125, which meant I knew most of my classmates from Kindergarten through high school. Thirteen years seems like forever when you’re young, but now it seems like a blink of an eye. Which is why I’m still trying to decide if I want to fly back to Minnesota to see folks I might not have seen in 40 years. I’ve been back to a couple reunions, when I lived closer. Thanks to social media, I’ve kept up on a superficial level with several classmates. I know more about them now than I did in high school when we ran with different circles of friends.
I suspect most people fall into two camps: those who thought high school was the best time ever and those who couldn’t wait for it to be done. I leaned towards the latter. I was a good student and had some great teachers. I enjoyed most of my classes, but I didn’t play sports and was a band nerd, like most of my friends. We hung out in the library when we finished lunch to avoid the kids who roamed the halls looking for other kids to pick on. We were never invited to the keggers that happened on the weekends, but I wouldn’t have gone even if I was.
I realized how different my high school experience was from some of my classmates when I went back for our 20th reunion. After dinner, they showed a video of our high school days, filled with photos the organizers had collected. I was in some group shots of our trip to the Rose Bowl in 1983, maybe a couple more with my friends in some class or after-school club. The rest of the slide deck was filled with the kings and queens of our homecoming dances and proms, cheerleaders, football and basketball players, and all the hijinks on the team buses or after parties in backyards. It was fun to relive some of the highlights of those years, photos of favorite teachers, the things that were important to us then: giant permed hair, neon-bright clothing, baggy jeans, Sony Walkmans, eating at the Pizza Factory, playing arcade games at the mall, and even a picture of the 1978 Firebird my best friend had that ratcheted her up the coolness ladder our senior year. My slideshow would not have been the same as the one I was watching.
When I visit Minnesota, I usually catch up with a friend I’ve known since we took swimming lessons together in first grade. She’s never gone to a class reunion and says she won’t until her friend Bill, the second-smartest kid in our class, decides he’s going to go. Which is probably never. My cool Firebird friend just moved back after spending most of her life as a middle-school teacher in Las Vegas. She’s not sure if she’s up for it. The Facebook thread for the reunion is enthusiastic about a soon-to-be-announced house party with catered dinner somewhere in my hometown, but the thread is filled with all the folks I never knew well growing up.
Which leads me to wonder why I want to go back at all. I think it’s curiosity about who my classmates have become over the last four decades, and to see what 58 looks like on them. When I read their names on Facebook, for a few seconds, I remember them as they were at 16, but then I see their photos and know their lives have gone in so many directions, just like mine. And I think part of me hopes I’ll find out we’re much more alike now than we were back then, now that the cliques have fallen away and we’ve experienced life and loss and everything that comes with growing older.