Musings of Missed Reunion and Union That Never Was

We all know about the seductive power of high school reunions. Cue up a love song from the year of the prom, start slow-dancing on the gym floor, and suddenly, otherwise sane and satisfied middle-aged people want to go to Reno with someone they haven’t seen in 20 years.

I can’t explain it, there was this bond between us, your best friend says, breathless as he recounts the reunion. He says he knows it’s crazy, but he’s decided to divorce his wife, abandon his four kids and marry the classmate he could never get a date with in junior high but who thought he looked great at the reunion.

She said she doesn’t mind bald! he tells you. Sure, you say, sounds like a great idea (It’s perfectly all right to tell him that, because in a few days he’ll be back to normal and apologize for being such a dope).

With summer upon us, the reunion season is back. Scores of people who attend theirs will experience a depth of feeling--whether passion, melancholy or sheer joy--that may catch them off guard because of its strength in comparison to the way they feel in everyday life.

I’m a sucker for reunions because, as I’ve said many times before in this column, I’m just about the sappiest guy around. I’m not studied enough to know exactly why that bond with high school classmates is so strong; I just know it is.

That point was reinforced a few days ago when a letter arrived from a girl who was in my high school class in Weeping Water, Neb. An Orange County friend of hers had sent her a column in which I mentioned my old school, and so my old classmate, still living in Nebraska, dropped me a note.

Perhaps I make too much of things that are unimportant, but something struck me about her note: namely, how perfectly natural it seemed to hear from her.

Rather than sounding like a cordial but halting letter from a long-forgotten acquaintance, it flowed as smoothly as if we’d been in touch throughout the years with hers but the latest in the steady stream of correspondences. What’s strange is that we’ve never written to each other and that the only time I’ve seen her since high school days was at our 20th reunion five years ago. Then, we hardly talked at all. Even stranger (to me) is that I only attended school there for 1 1/2 years, leaving in the middle of our sophomore year, so that we didn’t even have the benefit of a full four-year friendship.

We never dated and my recollection is that she hardly ever gave me the time of day. So why did her letter jump so effortlessly off the page at me and the relationship seem so familiar?

She mentioned a few other classmates who, just as with her, I’ve seen once since leaving Weeping Water in 1964. Their faces seem as instantly familiar to me as if we’d all gotten together last week.

With every name she mentioned I conjured up an immediate story or association. In her case, it was a hot summer night in August with the county fair in town, and me being a 14-year-old kid trying to accidentally run into her on the midway and summon the courage to ask her to ride with me on the Ferris wheel. It was a task beyond my powers and we left town a few months later, with me never confessing to the period when she caused me such lightheadedness.

Many miles traveled since then, eh?

In her note, she said how much her life had changed just since the 20th reunion five years ago. Her marriage ended, she said, because her husband decided he “didn’t want to be married any longer.” She told of her 21-year-old son who just got married and a 16-year-old son going to England with his soccer team. I couldn’t have told you that she was even married or if she had any kids, and yet there was something strangely comforting and intimate about learning of them.

Many miles, indeed.

I should probably call in the anthropology squad to explain to me why I got such a lift from her letter. Maybe it’s all wrapped up in the security of knowing that old friendships somehow sustain themselves over the years, even in the absence of personal contact. As much as I enjoyed hearing from her, it was equally touching that she would instinctively know that her letter would be welcomed. It was wonderful that she didn’t feel the need to say, “Gee, I bet you can’t believe who this is” or “I don’t suppose you remember me, but . . .”

No, she didn’t need to say it because she knows the bond will always be there, maybe made stronger by the ties that small-town life forges between friends, but never one that needs redefining.

She said they had the 25-year reunion at the Legion Hall this year and that 17 came out of what I remember to be a class of 20 or so. Later this summer, the class is having another get-together--another great time that I’ll miss.

It would be great to see the old class again and have a night of guaranteed laughs, but in the meantime it’ll be great fun to curl up some night soon and dash off my return letter to her, hoping it feels as comfortable in her hands as hers did in mine.