This year I, along with an old friend, have decided to initiate a high school reunion. Not unusual one might say. People have them all the time. I have gone to two with my husband in the last eight years; the third one I politely declined. But for me there is a feeling that while a high school reunion might be filled with possibilities it also might be fraught with missteps.
Our high school was in New Jersey and the fall of 1964 saw the welcoming of our freshman class which numbered just around three hundred. The school was overcrowded and undergoing an addition. Consequently the freshman went to classes in the afternoons from twelve noon until five pm. Finally, having arrived at high school we were denied access; all the upperclassmen attended in the morning.
The school was fed by two middle schools, called junior highs back then, from two neighboring townships. I had moved to New Jersey the year before and had attended one of the junior highs for my eighth grade year. One year later I found myself with equally as many new people to meet and try to get to know. In retrospect I think we might have gotten closer as a class just because we were alone in the school all those afternoons of that first year.
Our sophomore year the new addition opened and we joined the upperclassmen as well as the incoming freshman. A lot of people to sift through. It was a challenge but also fun as we found ourselves in classes with older boys. And older girls?
I really don't remember much about those first two years; my experience comes more into focus during my junior year when I became an officer of the class, was inducted into the National Honor Society, joined the women's softball team and joined the ranks of the dating. It was during this year that I became aware of leaders in the school and gravitated towards becoming one.
Our class lacked focus and leadership was part of the problem. While there was a class dues structure to raise funds, the school also facilitated fundraising events to accumulate the necessary monies to provide for senior year expenses.
Traditionally, the senior class treasury paid for everyone's yearbook, for their senior prom and for a senior trip. Our class was woefully underfunded halfway through our junior year and it became apparent that we would have to make some tough choices. Being very vocal I got drafted to run for senior class president. Supported by some close friends, we decided to make a run for it, to raise some consciousness and enough dollars to have the kind of senior year every class had had before us.
The system was skewered towards the senior class as most of the fundraising was their prerogative. So while it wasn't as impossible as it seemed we had been lazy in paying our dues, and inspiring people to both pay back dues and work at various fundraising events was a challenge.
And yet it wasn't. We had great fundraising events. A battle of the bands, a dance before school, the traditional Junior-Senior Variety Show, the refreshment stand at the football games. There are sure to be other events that I am forgetting but those stand out in my mind.
Having completed almost all of my core curriculum, I took two art classes that year. The first period art class became our war council room, and we made posters and banners to spread throughout the school at home football games and every imaginable fundraising opportunity. We became Mighty Great 68 and it was a mighty great year.
We sailed into graduation with money to spare, enough to make a gift to the school, and had a fabulous time spending it. And when that night finally came I felt connected to people in way I never had as an army brat moving, moving all the time. I remember sharing my feelings with a friend as we escaped a graduation party and drove around in his brother's convertible. I was very sad to see high school end. And I was right to be.
It would take me over twenty years to find a group of friends with whom I would forge those kind of connections. And because I was an army brat I walked away from high school without maintaining any of those early friendships. It is now, almost fifty years later, that I realize what an amazing experience high school was for me, what a loss those relationships has been.
High School is the place we come into as children and leave having had our first brush with adulthood. For many of us those years are fraught with pain and not fitting in; for me they became filled with a sense of belonging that I had never experienced before. I was right to be sad that it was over; but it was also right to walk away, to know that I wasn't ready to have those kinds of connections in my life.
I envy those who are ready, and do maintain those feelings of connection. I have several friends who get together with old high school buddies on a regular basis. There is always the danger of being limited by those old friendships, of not being seen for anything other than what you were at eighteen, but there is also the feeling of being known.
When my older brother died five years ago I felt like I was cut loose from my moorings. He was the last person who knew me as a child, and had witnessed me becoming the adult I am today. I still grieve that loss.
And so as I, we, work towards this fall reunion I look forward to seeing people who knew me as a fledgling adult. I look forward to seeing that alien girl/woman again as a part of me. Because those years have informed so much of what I have done with my life and who I am today. At a time when I feel myself to be fully grown, deciding if I have one more grand work left in me, it will be nice to visit with people who shared my first grand work.
The trepidation comes with fear of trying too hard to entertain, to be the center or a group which is no longer, to be something for everyone. The joy will come with being a facilitator for a new group and to stand back and see what happens. No matter what, the stretch will come from being with people who were a witness to my emerging self; and to trust them with who I am today. And to be a witness to their lives. If you are open to it, everything comes full circle.
