Not Nostalgia, Exactly

[moon_custafer]

Yesterday was my 20th high-school reunion. I didn't go, of course -- I live too far away from the town I grew up in, I can't really afford to take time off work to travel at the moment, and in any case green_trilobite doesn't do well on airplanes. I think I also feel like I haven't made much of my life.

I feel less bad about missing it after seeing the photos they posted this morning. Not that they don't appear to be having a good time, but it looks as though there was no overlap between the people who showed up and the people I actually hung out with, back in the day. I think there were three or four faces I was able to recognize.

Facebook+former classmates make an interesting combination -- as with the reunion, most of the people who've asked to friend me and who post regularly are people I never knew that well. One of them I now kind of wish I had -- he grew up to be a high-school football coach *and* drama coach, he's a geek, and he has three kids who look uncannily like him -- even the six-month-old had his slightly puffy lower eyelids from birth. He's a comic-book and Star Wars geek and has been trying, this summer, to wear a different t-shirt each day from his extensive collection, and posting photos.

Several other people now travel a lot up north and seem, by their postings, to be constantly dealing with bears and things. One of them became a pastry chef. The girl who was partially-paralyzed from having had meningitis as a kid now races recliner bicycles.

I am not sure what my point is here.

Comments

[fragrantwoods.livejournal.com]

Reunions are strange to me...I went to my 10th HS reunion because a friend didn't want to go alone. There were maybe three people I was happy to see.
Right now, one of the "stars" of my graduating class is running for governor of NC, and it's kind of a reunion-y vibe when his ads run on TV. Now I want to facebook my high school and see if there's any recent reunion shots, just to see about that recognizing thing.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I've always been better at identifying actors than actresses, and until now I assumed it was because Hollywood had a narrower definition of attractive for female than for male stars -- but among my former classmates I found the men easier to recognize than the women. I don't know if I'm just better at recognizing one sex than the other.

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

I think that women do physically change a lot more, even just about the face, than men in general.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I don't know - I think most of the men had changed more, physically -- but the facial features were still distinctive enough to be recognizable. They've posted some more photos and I was able to match a couple of the women to my memories of their faces; it may also be that most of them I simply didn't know that well to begin with.

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

The people who make a big deal out of High School Reunions tend, of course, to be people who had a great time there: perhaps even peaking then. This doesn't include me so I never went to any of mine. I kept in pretty close contact with my half-dozen or so High School friends for as long as it seemed to work out but there's only one guy I ever contact any more. I never went to any of the reunions and neither did any of my High School friends. There was a giant push for our 25th reunion and someone actually spent a lot of effort tracking me down. I couldn't conceive of anyone that was going to be there that I'd want to meet. Someone I vaguely knew went and reported that ever thug and bully that had made my life miserable had been there: mostly in a satisfying state of pathos.

Many more of my important friends came from my college years although not from my Engineering class. I went to the 10th reunion of the class. None of the people I really knew went (seems that turn-out is light until the 25th or so as Chemical Engineers tend to disperse pretty widely) and my life was totally different from all of theirs: Grosse Pointe Blank different - which I saw for the second time across the street from the Waterloo hotel that I was staying at for the reunion. My career had gone down the computer path and my personal life had no family aspects. The latter was mostly concerned with fighting cults at that point.