After 25 years, reunion just feels right

Twenty-five years ago this week, 300 capped-and-gowned teenagers made the solemn march down the auditorium aisles at Moncton High School to the familiar strains of Pomp and Circumstance.

This weekend, many of those ‘teenagers’ will gather to remember a time when life seemed so much simpler. We will relive high school pranks, bury old hatchets, rekindle dormant friendships. We’ll trade photos of children and perhaps even grandchildren - we’ll ask about jobs and parents, old friends and enemies; we’ll groan at the bad fashions and even worse music of the late 1970s.

There may be a few whispers in the MHS cafeteria corners - Gee, she still looks great; Wow, has he spent too long at the buffet table? Man, old so-and-so can still suck back his beer.

Growing up in the ’70s, I always felt a little cheated. My two older sisters spent most of their formative years in the ’60s, when revolution was ripe, hippies and peace were in and the Beatles and folk music were cool. The kids of the ’60s had idealism.

But who were our idols in the late ’70s? KC and the Sunshine Band? John Travolta in that skin-hugging white suit? Did we really wear that much polyester? Were our bell-bottoms flared that much? Did my haircut look like it was fashioned with a bowl?

Many people dread high school reunions. If they were popular in school but life hasn’t treated them so well, it isn’t easy to live up to past glory. If they weren’t popular in school, will anyone remember?

I remember my 10-year high school reunion. Looking back, having a reunion after 10 years might be too early. It seemed that people were too eager to show they had made it - hey, I’m already making $50-G a year!; Yup, that’s my shiny ’88 Camaro out there; My boss tells me I’m on the fast-track to the executive offices.

There was still some fun, but you didn’t necessarily want to see all those people so soon after leaving them 10 years earlier on the MHS stage.

Twenty-five years, I think, will be different. And a more lasting memory.

I’ve already seen ample evidence of that in the meetings of our reunion organizing committee over the past five months - plenty of banter, self-deprecation and laughs; no pretension, protective façades or agendas.

After a quarter-century (ah, that sounds old), we really have nothing left to prove, no boasting to be done, no image to maintain. We are who we are. We are at the point where we have made our decisions on life’s path and, for better or worse, we’re comfortable with those choices.

Got a few wrinkles? Hey, who doesn’t. Put on a few pounds? Join the majority. Divorced or separated? Never married? Join that long line over there. Wish you had taken that other path at the proverbial fork in the road? We all wish so once in awhile.

After 25 years, life has a way of levelling the playing field. We could all share common experiences in high school - teachers and tantrums, hijinks and high anxiety, dream dates and no dates.

But we will have even more to share this weekend - the loss of a loving parent, the joy of new birth and watching our kids grow, the exhilaration of a promotion, the agony of a missed opportunity. And more than anything else, we will share the sense of a fragile bond that has frayed and stretched over 25 years, but never been severed.

My niece graduated from Moncton High this week, and in her graduation card I wrote that she should cherish these years, because never again will "life’s possibilities be so limitless, your time so much your own, your friends so close."

I may be right. But then again, perhaps this weekend will prove me wrong.