High School Reunions

Here's your post, Kenju! Thanks for the idea!

My high school class never managed to organize a 25-year reunion. We had a ten-year and a twenty-year reunion, but then somehow ran out of steam before reaching the silver anniversary.

I attended the earlier reunions and can offer some general observations.

• Men attend their class reunion if they are successful in their careers or can at least pretend to be.
• Women attend their class reunion if they feel confident that they have aged as well or better than their classmates.
• The couple who dated all through high school - the one everyone considered a horrible mismatch - will be happily married.
• The plain girl you barely noticed in high school will have become beautiful and the beautiful girl you lusted for in high school will not have aged gracefully (but will be blissfully unaware of this fact).
• You will NOT spend the evening chatting with those you were closest to in high school. You will spend the evening talking with those you were friends with back in elementary school.
• Few, if any, attendees will dance.

In 1998, the year of my 20-year class reunion, I was the mother of three children, ages 13, 11 and 5. I had graduated from a high school in a very small town in northern New Jersey. In 1998 I lived in an even smaller town in western Connecticut. The distance constituted about a four to five hour drive. I'd arranged for a day-care worker from my youngest son's preschool to stay at the house to look after the kids and the dog while my then-husband and I spent the weekend in Jersey. A former teacher of mine, with whom I'd remained friends, was going to be out of town that weekend, but offered to let us stay in his home - a huge and very lovely Victorian with an in-ground pool!

Around 4PM the day before we were to leave, I got news that our sitter's mother had taken ill. Our sitter would be unable to stay with the children as planned. It was far too late to find someone else. We were faced with a dilemma. In retrospect, we probably could have called the hotel where the event was being held to see if we could book a last-minute room and then taken the kids with us. For some reason, we never thought of that. Instead, my then-husband stayed home and my daughter (ever the party girl, even at 11) and I headed for New Jersey.

We drove around town and I showed her my childhood home, my school, my old neighborhood. We swam in our host's pool. That night, we drove over to the hotel for the big event - just me and my 11-year-old, female escort. Soon after arriving, I bumped into a woman I'd been friends with in what would now be called junior high. (There was nothing formal between elementary school and high school in those days.) Naturally she asked where I was living, and I responded that we lived in a small town inConnecticut, over near the Rhode Island line. She asked me to name the town. I replied that I was certain she'd have never heard of the tiny place with a population of about 4,000. She insisted. When I provided the name, recognition immediately appeared on her face. "Oh," she said, "Betsy is a teacher there! Do you remember Betsy Jones? Only her name is O'Malley now." At those words, my daughter's eyes opened wide. "Mrs. O'Malley?? The math teacher??" We'd driven for hours, from one tiny little obscure town in Connecticu to another tiny little obscure town in New Jersey, only to discover my daughter's math teacher was there! What are the chances??

My daughter didn't spend too much time marveling the coincidence. She befriended a classmate of mine I didn't for the life of me remember. He had become a struggling actor with an outgoing and charming personality and he spent much of the night burning up the dance floor with my daughter. She was thrilled.

As a last-minutereplacement, I think she had more fun than I did!

A side note: My daughter, now 18, will be graduating this Sunday at noon. The weather reports for new England do not look promising. If the event has to be moved indoors, rather than outdoors on the lovely campus of the school, graduation will be in the gym, attendees will be on the bleachers and each graduate will be limited to only three guests. Please, pray for a break in the rain for a few hours in the middle of the day on Sunday!! Thanks!