Kerryn WoodHigh School Reunions - To Go or Not To Go
May 20th 2007 12:11
A letter arrives in the mail. You open it; it’s an invitation. Your wife asks what it is you are invited to. Your 20 year high school reunion, you answer. You going to go? she asks. You stop and consider this question. No, probably not, you say, and then add, I couldn’t be bothered, and head out to the shed.
In the shed you find that old milk crate stacked with old papers and photo albums, some trophies and a couple of old cassette tapes. You pick up the albums and start to flick through one. Immediately you are cast back in time to your high school days, 20 years ago. There you are with your best mate Pete, out on the oval, smoking a cigarette. You wonder where Pete is these days? He was your best friend back then, how is it, you wonder, that you could lose touch with someone with whom you had such a close camaraderie? You wonder if Pete will be at the reunion. It would be great to see him again after all this time.
You see a picture of Kellie, she was such a spunk. You wonder if Kellie will be at the reunion, and if she is still as hot as she was twenty years ago? Is that possible? You hope so!
You sit down, get comfortable, and continue to browse through your old albums. You see photo’s of Matthew McKenzie, the guy you had your first fight with in the quad, the gym where you went to your first school dance, and Amanda, the girl you first kissed. You smile as memories come flooding back. You start to re-consider; maybe you would go to that high school reunion after all.
So how do you think you would respond to your reunion invite? Would you bother going? Are you curious about old friends and enemies? Would you be too embarrassed perhaps feel awkward - are you uncomfortable with your life since high school? Do you really care?
These questions, I posed to an array of people, and while initial negative responses were varied, they rallied together on a similar theme: “I’ve never been to any of my high school reunions; I was never invited; No, I have no interest in seeing people I went to school with; If I went to my school reunion, I'd make sure I brought a gun; Wouldn't go,even if they paid me.”
high school days
In spite of this, aren’t you just a little curious about your former fellow classmates? Aren’t you interested to see if the cool kids are still cool, is the good looking trendy guy still good looking and trendy, or is he bald with a beer belly? Is that loud mouthed nasty girl still a bitchy cow, or has she mellowed with time, four kids and age? Don’t you want to know if the ’most likely to succeed’, succeeded? Or if the placid and painfully shy person finally broke out of their shell? Don’t you want to know who ended up in jail, or who became rich and famous?
And what about you yourself? Are you not eager to show off how much weight you’ve lost; or how beautiful you‘ve become; to brag about that PhD; to tell everyone about your family; to share your achievements, no matter what they may be?
Each year, High School reunions are becoming increasingly popular events attended by former classmates who haven‘t seen each other in 10, 20 or more years. What is it about this light-hearted social occasion that draws people in and makes so many want to go? Does this exercise in nostalgia hold more significance for it’s participants than first anticipated?
With thousands of former classmates reuniting and re connecting with each other, their reasons for going are as diverse as the people themselves. And following a successful reunion, often comes the ‘ripple effect’ - the term coined to explain a frequent carry on effect of a successful reunion where; old friendships are rekindled, existing friendships are strengthened, and new friendships and even romances are formed.
class photos
Registered Psychologist, Joshua Switzer says, “The ripple effect refers to a set of effects, both intended and unintended, that emanate from an action, much like a stone being dropped into a pool of water. The point being that the original effects then become causes in themselves, causing further ripples, which causes even more.”
It can be a daunting, nerve wracking and an anxious time to self impose a night of reliving memories from a past long gone. For some these memories are of happier times, easier times, times of “feeling young, free-spirited, single and carefree“ as Louise, a high school reunion advocate remembers.
According to Stephanie DeLuse, a doctor of psychology at Arizona State University, in America, there are many factors behind our motivations to return to reunions. These include she says, “The curiosity factor; We want to find out how people turned out. We engage in social comparisons, sometimes without even thinking about it. And we want to see how people are doing so we can compare our situations with theirs.”
where is she now?
De Luse also says ‘the desire to right a wrong’ and ‘a longing to set the record straight,’ are commonplace motivations where apologies are made, confrontations with old adversaries occur and old stereotypes are quashed.
There is also what De Luse calls, ‘the hope factor’, where “We might want to catch the eye of an old crush or track down old friends.”
The book “A Room full of Mirrors”, by Keiko Ikeda, a Japanese anthropologist and author, examines high school reunions as the “dramatic scene in the construction of self and meaning in adulthood.” Ikeda claims that when former classmates are thrown into a room together, they “see images of their high school selves filtered through the lights and shadows cast by classmates’ memories and projected against the backdrop created by the lives of those classmates in the present day.”
Through an analysis of the multiple reflections of self that emerge during reunions, the author shows how reunions afford people an occasion on which to re-evaluate their own memories and arrive at a new understanding of self.
Ron Lemish, a Montreal pharmacist and amateur photographer who has been photographing reunions for the past decade, says the most exciting part of reunions is the first half-hour.
girls, girls, girls...
"People get their name tags and meet others they haven't seen in 30 years," he said. "At the beginning, there's a pregnant pause when they're trying to recognize each other. When people reconnect, the women are screaming and crying and the guys are slapping each other on the back."
However, there can also be memories that are painful and often still raw. Memories of being bullied, teased publicly humiliated are still very fresh in the minds of many. Sadly, these somewhat miserable memories are not unfamiliar, as backed up by a comment from Paul about his reunion, “I thought I may take a baseball bat and get square with all the people that tormented the bejesus out of me”.
Nevertheless, I interviewed a variety of people about their positive motivations for attending their own reunions, and while they all had different answers, the underlying themes were evident; curiosity; an interest to see how people have changed; catch up with friends they hadn’t seen in a long time; meet their families; repair past grievances; to show off how they have changed and to have a good time.
friends reunite
Kerrie claims her motivations for going to her 20 year high school reunion were to, “See people I had not seen in 20 years; Catch up with people I had not had much contact with; Rekindle old friendships if it worked out that way; and to catch up with people I had lost contact with”.
“I guess you could say my motivation was curiosity“ says Rosie, an attendee of her twenty year reunion. “I wanted to see where everyone was at in their lives: who was married, who had children, what jobs did they have, where they were living, what they looked like. All of this was especially interesting to me as I had only kept in touch with 2 people since leaving school and had only bumped into about 4 others over the years”.
Paul said his motivation to attend his twenty year reunion was a mixture of curiosity and that he “was interested to meet the people I hung out with and see what they’re up to.”
high school sweethearts?
Sharon, another reunion attendee said, “Not only was I curious to find out about long lost school friends but I was hoping to regain lost friendships from the past”.
Perhaps one of the most interesting and revealing insights into the reasons for attending a high school reunion, comes from Josh, who states that not only was he curious about seeing his fellow school mates, but he was interested in ‘repairing the past’.
Josh says that going to the reunion would be his chance ‘to face the past’. A secret well guarded until his final year in high school, Josh was ‘outed’ by a fellow classmate. As a gay man, Josh says he had some questions about his experience of high school, and being gay that he wished to ‘re-visit’, and to see if his ‘perspective had changed’.
So were these past students curiosities met? Were old friendships rekindled, were new ones forged? Were old grievances worked through and finally laid to rest? Was peace made between friend and foe? Did the ugly duckling turn into a beautiful swan? And what about the most popular boy in the class; jail? gay? Or did he marry the most popular girl in the class?
friends reunited
I asked the participants of their reunions if their expectations and curiosities were met. Tracey states, “The September reunion proved to be an amazing experience for me. It was 5 days out of my usual adult routine. It was very much a revisiting of my youth but with an adult perspective - with a more forgiving outlook - with an acceptance that I too had inflicted hurt as a teenager.”
And while Rosie admits to feeling nervous prior to the night, the end result “was a much better time than I ever could have anticipated.”
Mark shares his experience and reflections of his reunion: “I think we accidentally lose friendships with time. Its not because the friendship didn't have merit initially, but as you focus on life changes, you drift on. The proof of this for me is the fact that so many of those old friendships are now, 20 years later, really important to me again (along with 1 or 2 new ones). I guess when you share up to as long as 12 of potentially the most impressionable years of your life with a group of people, its ridiculous to think you'd just forget them, and not wonder how life had panned out for them. These are the things that drew me back.”
Kerrie was asked if her hopes of having friendship rekindled panned out, “Yes, it happened with a couple of the girls. I have kept in touch with them since the reunion, which was a nice bonus.” Sharon’s experience was similar, “I was hoping to regain lost friendships from the past…and I now feel as though my mission was accomplished.”
However, not everyone had such positive things to say, Paul says, “I went, I saw, and in some respects I still felt like a square peg in a round hole, I talked to most of the people there, although after 20yrs the tides of time have deposited the drift wood far and wide on the beach of life.”
Conversely, there have been notable stories of everlasting love and newly formed romances. Kerry-Lyn and Michael were high school sweethearts, and when they turned up to their 20 year reunion, now married for over 15 years, they were still arm in arm, and had stories of their two children to share.
girl...
For Simone and Rees however, despite spending a good part of four years together in high school, it wasn’t until their own reunion where they met each other, and formed a relationship. Seven months after their reunion, they are still very much a happy couple. “I’d always liked Simone at school, but never really did anything about it,” Rees says, “But, it’s a pretty amazing thing that’s happened.”
...meets boy
Simone claims she never expected to find love on the night of her reunion, “It’s not the reason you go to these things,” she says, “And while I am still surprised by meeting up with Rees, we’re both very happy.”
Josh asserts that the reunion allowed for him a ‘reconnection with the past‘, and that he attended two subsequent reunion type meets “simply because I enjoyed people’s company.” Josh goes on to say that the people he made reconnections with, “remembered things I’d forgotten. They saw me in a different light to how I see myself in the present. I learnt. I heard from them. I’d been welcomed – people responded well to me.”
"The only reunion that I really wanted to attend was my 20th," says Becky Coggins of Arizona, USA "It's more fun to see people after a long time, and much more interesting to hear how their lives have changed after 20 years."
Becky says she feels sorry for people who choose not to be contacted and believes in the importance of reconnecting and maintaining old friendships. "Even though we're 48, we're still 18 at reunions," she says. "These are people who we shared our first life experiences with — first car, first crush, first heartbreak. Time may change outside, but not inside."
Perhaps the final quote can be attributed to the positive aspects that have emerged from Tracey’s original reunion, the up-shots of the so-called ’ripple effect.’
together again
“During those days (of the reunion weekend), I laughed, I reminisced, I rekindled old friendships, strengthened existing ones, made new friends, forgave people and was forgiven. It was an enormous emotional journey for me. I fell in love with people all over again. I once more experienced the strong bonds that teenagers form as they move from childhood to adulthood. I felt the comfort and warmth and security of life long friends. And from this and the subsequent get togethers I have cemented new and old friendships that will be important to me for my entire life.”
So, are you going to go to your reunion? Ultimately that decision is up to you. Do you want to spend a night renewing old friendships, talking to people from your past and possibly making new friends? Would you like the opportunity to settle a score, make peace, apologise or be apologised to? And can you be bothered reliving a night full of memories and laughter, a night that may just offer a rich and rewarding, poignant and positive experience?
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