We’re heading into summer, which means it will soon be time for class reunions. Alumni will spend a few hours together, trying to condense the years into snippets of information that are succinct enough to actually catch up.
For some vain reason, our physical appearance really matters on these occasions, at least while we’re still in our twenties and thirties. Seven days before the event we desperately need to lose 15 pounds and we can’t find a thing to wear that looks half-way decent.
These get-togethers are a complete break from our usual approach to going about in public. Ordinarily we don’t mind dashing out for a cup of coffee or running to the store without makeup. We ignore the odds that we will bump into our neighbors, the boss and those few people who’ve never seen what we look like without eyes and lips.
There is no way on God’s earth, however, that we would even consider attending a reunion looking like that. We’ve got to be a new and improved version of our senior pictures. After all, we don’t want our old "steady" to be glad he or she didn’t marry us, and we sure don’t want people to say they can see why the ex-spouse divorced us. Besides that, we need to look successful, so those who said we’d never get, or hold, a paying job will have to eat their words.
Early class reunions tend to be rituals of engineered images, but they take on a different tone after the first couple of decades. After that, I think we get a little more real. For one thing, our outward appearance starts to matter less, possibly because we can do less about it. By then, too, we’ve lived more and our priorities have changed. Reality has been altered. Kids, careers, a few serious losses and un-disguise-able wrinkles can do that.
By around the 30th year reunion it’s more about getting together, reminiscing and renewing friendships and less about trying to look as though we’ve prospered. We generally quit trying to maintain (or disprove) the images we had in high school because we’ve moved on mentally and emotionally. It’s almost as if, the older we get, the more new we become. It’s the younger version of our selves that’s old.
The special thing about a reunion is that we all have the same memories and can relate to each other. We speak the same language. Even though our children have heard the stories, they can’t really appreciate how things used to be. They never dragged Main on a few cents worth of gas, danced the twist for hours on end or drank five cent cokes at the drug store fountain. Occasionally it’s nice to be around people who did.
The sad part is the fact that sometimes we don’t recognize each other. It’s pretty scary to enter a room full of senior citizens and wonder where your old classmates went. I’m sure more than one person has greeted me, finally figured out who I was, then walked away and whispered, "That’s Judy? Good grief! I never would have known her, poor thing."
The most interesting phenomenon, however, is that we never think we look as old as everyone else. It makes me recall that e-mail I got about the woman who met her new dentist for the first time and thought he looked like such an old man. As they chatted she discovered they went to high school together and she exclaimed, "Why, you were in my class!" He looked surprised and asked, "No kidding? What did you teach?"
This is hilarious! I couldn't stop laughing. I guess that's because I saw myself in your writing. I'd never thought about it before, but it sounds like there's a bell-shaped curve to vanity. We don't have it when we're young and we lose it when we're old, but those years in between are really something! Thanks for a great laugh! :)
Posted by: Lucy | June 18, 2008 at 12:02 AM