Reunions

We all love reunion stories of reunited high school sweethearts or long-held secrets finally revealed. While there was no romance at the high school reunion I attended last weekend (at least not that I was aware of!), there were lots of good memories and old friends.

My high school closed a few years after I graduated, and I suppose that’s why we’ve had a hard time getting together those “official” high school reunions. We had a ten-year reunion, which I attended, and we had a twenty-year reunion, which I did not attend, but then we kind of stalled. But this year with one of the girls from our “core group” coming out to California from Virginia to visit her father, a few friends decided to put together something small at the family restaurant of one of girls. Well, word got out and the “something small” turned into something a little bigger, and we had about 75 people show up.

On the way to the reunion, I picked up my friend and we made a few stops along the way. We went by the house where I grew up and while she was taking pictures of me in front of the house, the owner drove up. When I told him I had grown up in the house, he invited us in to look around. Wow, talk about memories! If those walls could talk. I was happy to see that the current occupants are a young couple with two young boys. When I left I told him that my parents had raised four kids in that house, and I hoped that he would raise his family there too (the house had changed hands a lot since my mom passed away and we sold it in ’87). Next stop was my elementary school and more pictures, and then onto our high school, which is now a private school. We pointed out other friends’ houses to each other and other important landmarks like the A&W Rootbeer place, which is now a Thai restaurant.

We got to the restaurant where the reunion was being held a little early and helped our hostess put the finishing touches on the décor, which included blue and white frosted cupcakes that spelled out JETS. I don’t live in the area anymore and I hadn’t seen most of those people in over 25 years, but it seemed as if time stood still. We all gravitated to the same general groups that we did in high school. We told old jokes and shared our memories of crazy high school times. A few people brought their old photo albums and yearbooks. Two of our teachers even showed up for the event, and somehow they didn’t look so old anymore!

Our little group closed the place down at about midnight, and then my friend came back to my hotel with me and we talked until 4:00 AM! I’m sure we could’ve talked the whole night through, but I had a plane to catch the next morning and had to drop her off at her dad’s place.

We both marveled at how easily we all slipped into an easy camaraderie. I guess there’s a reason we were all such good friends in high school. I’m so glad I went!

Do you have any great reunion stories? Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

Leaving you with a picture of me and my crazy girrrl friends…(I'm second from the right, giggling like crazy!)


7 comments:

Stacey Joy Netzel said...

I'm a tad jealous of your 'easy camaraderie'. The last time I got together with people from high school (never went to the reunions) my old uncomfortable shyness was right back from when I walked the halls, until my best friend showed up. I was pretty sure I'd changed so much since HS, but it certainly didn't feel that way that night. LOL

Carol Ericson said...

Stacey, sorry to hear that, but really it did seem like we hadn't changed at all! We fell right back into the groove. LOL One of my friends commented that the same people who were drinking and drugging in high school were the same people who were getting drunk at the reunion - LOL - she was right!

Lexi said...

How wonderful, Carol!

I attended my 20 year last August and it was awesome. I was able to reconnect with some very cool friends from high school and the whole bunch of us are on Facebook. At one point, my best high school friend and I stopped eating dinner, looked at each other and giggled. It was as if no time had passed! How can we all we so close to forty when I still feel 16 inside????

Carol Ericson said...

Lexi, a lot of us are on Facebook too, and we've been having some fun rehashing the reunion and making plans for the next one. Yes, exactly like no time had passed. We laughed and giggled and acted silly and those girls were the same as I remembered them!

Cameo Brown said...

Got a reunion coming up in the summer. It's a curiosity to me now because social networking has helped us reach a bunch of classmates the organizers couldn't before. It ought to be realllllly interesting. lol

Carol Ericson said...

Have fun, Cameo. The result of the social networking sites for me is that my classmates' appearances weren't as much of a surprise because I'd already seen their FB pictures! This wasn't one of those reunions open to everyone - it started small and grew because of the social networking sites. Still there were a few folks on FB who wondered why EVERYONE wasn't invited (so high school, huh?). Well, it wasn't that kind of reunion. There was just one girl organizing it at her family's restuarant. As it was, it grew a little bigger than she'd anticipated because some up and posted it on Classmates.com!

Sandy said...

I went to my forty-fifth class reunion and really enjoyed it. People do change, but for the better.