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What am I at my age?
Facing the pains, challenges and explanations of reunions | |
| By Leonard J. Hansen | |
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All reunions should be banned. By law if necessary. Or, by common sense as a necessity. If I were running the country, I'd not allow them. High schools and colleges, clubs and military units all have reunions. They're announced in your local newspaper and, unless you’ve carefully covered your trail over the years, you're sure to get an announcement in the mail. Most alumni organizations can find you sooner and surer than the tax man about your 1994 federal income return or the department of motor vehicles for your drivers license renewal. There are career alumni organizers, most self ordained at the time of graduation or when mustering out of the service. Yesterdays cannot be allowed to fade. Yesteryears must be re-lived, re-told and even re-experienced today. The problem is that when going to reunions you also have to re-explain those embarrassing moments or what were then cataclysmic events. Mary Jane Figbee graduated in 1949 and became alumni chairperson that very same year. I can't face her at all. She wails loudly as I enter the room, "Len, tell me. What really did happen between you and Sally Jo Foster?" As if it mattered today. As if I wanted, at all, to recall my ineptness in trying to kiss a girl six inches taller than me (even when I added lifts inside my saddle shoes), only to crash on to her flouncy circle skirt, and then both of us to the ground in front of the other sophomores. How many years ago? For me it was a hellish yesterday; for Mary Jane Figbee and many others it is yet a major and unanswered curiosity. I quit going to high school, and even college, reunions years ago. Not because of Mary Jane Figbee but because of the other graduates from those ivied halls. Those people have changed! I wouldn't know most of them without their name tags. Except for Henry Bruno, whose loud voice sounded then and now like a ferryboat scraping the side of the dock. I don't recognize those people, and they're talking about things better left in a merciful past. But these are strangers in new camouflage. They have grown extra chins, and are able to stand free and aloof utilizing greatly expanded beltlines. They've lost hair and gained ailments, and talk centers most intensely about both. High school and college years brought calamities worse than trying to kiss Sally Jo Foster. In a baseball game, swinging when I was supposed to bunt — the lesser of two evils reasoned Coach Marston at the time. Or, choosing to drag race in my 1934 Plymouth, when in front of hundreds of people my underpowered car sputtered to an agonizing stop when that one gallon of gas didn't go very far. Or, spilling my tray in the lunch line, all over the school bully. On the bright side of that event, I did find that I could run faster - but unfortunately not longer - than ever before. But Mary Jane Figbee is after me. "Send your check and be here for sure," she orders. "Pete Porter and Suzy Small are going to dance the Big Apple just like they did when they almost won the school talent contest." (I must correct her history, in that Pete Porter and Suzy Small finished twelfth out of fourteen. But they did get a certificate for participating.) Mary Jane sends me form letters every month; and I'll find her news releases in the newspaper. Can I put up with it? No. Emphatically, no. Have Mary Jane Figbee arrested for harassment! We have to legislate against this kind of thing. Get Congress to pass a law! Get the Supreme Court to rule the events as cruel and unusual punishment! Get Sylvester Stallone, in his inimitable style, to declare reunions a "dumb idea, you hear?" I refuse to consider another reunion. I have changed over the years. I've grown almost a foot taller from my days as a sophomore. I wonder if Sally Joe Foster will.......... |
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