subject: To Go Or Not To Go To The Class Reunion [print this page] All it takes is one glance through the doors to realize you've found the right place. It's that familiar smell of school hallways and blackboard chalk dust that sends the brain reeling from memory overload. Around the room you see strange faces but the classic roles are all there: the class clown, the mathlete, the geek, the jock, punk, prom queen and burnouts not a single role unfulfilled. Ten, twenty, even thirty years have gone by since you last stepped foot in these halls and then all of a sudden you receive an invitation for your class reunion, do you go?
Ultimately, this is a decision that everyone who attended formal education has to make. It is often based upon a whole plethora of factors. Factors such as where you stood in the hierarchal structure of the school experience. Were you happy, sad, fat, thin, smart, stupid? And where have you gone since then?
The class reunion is an interesting experience because as a species humans are naturally curious and cannot help the urge to peer into the lives of those who you spent four six very intimate years alongside. Does the old idea that jocks end up in trailer homes and nerds end up controlling Microsoft hold up? Did the quiet girl evolve into a model? Did the outcast become a celebrity? These questions we all ask ourselves from our freshman year and onward will only be revealed through time.
Nothing is static. It is time that is the great equalizer. Through the years we grow old, get fat, lose our hair and hoard or squander our riches. As the years trudge on we suffer and we experience joy and people come in and out of our lives. Class reunions can reunite us with some of the people who have walked out for various reasons. It can also reunite us with a part of ourselves we may have forgotten through the years that pile up upon us.
Maybe one of the biggest motivation factors when deciding to attend a class reunion is that very thought. The idea of reuniting with the stereotypes we left behind in the school locker rooms and cafeterias and seeing how far we have progressed, or regressed. Maybe it's the chance to show off how far you've come and see how far everyone else has as well. Be it for better or for worse.
Class Reunions remind some of their glory days but for many it's just a reminder of days best left behind. To attend invites comparisons. For those comfortable with themselves or else too arrogant to care, the class reunion can be an agreeable journey back in time. For others, with more complicated and confused personal histories, the invitation dredges up memories that years of therapy have hopefully worked out. Saying yes to the class reunion is not simply a dance down memory lane.
