Coveting the dreaded 10-year reunion
Most people would rather skip their high school reunions. Especially their 10-year reunion.
It’s a strange thing because not only are you not too far separated from your high school days, the 10-year reunion is the first real reminder you’re getting old. Many people would also just like to forget their high school days.
I guess I’m unlike most people, though. I’d actually like to go to my 10-year reunion. My problem is that I don’t think I can. I fall into a group of people who didn’t graduate from the high school they spent the majority of their time attending.
And although at my first school I was sort of one of the quiet, generic-type kids who wasn’t part of a stereotypical clique and didn’t participate in anything beyond class, I always look back fondly on the time I spent there, my teachers, and the friends I made — some similarly generic and some from the various cliques.
I started at a small private school in suburban Chicago where everyone knew everyone else, which I attended up until the middle of my junior year. Then I moved. My dad took a job in Michigan, where I graduated from a gigantic public school I never cared about or made a point to make any friends at.
During my final year and a half of high school, I spent more time talking over the phone to, emailing, and taking weekend, spring break, and summer trips to visit my Chicago area friends than making new Michigan friends.
I did make some friends at my new school and at the KFC I ended up working at, but maybe only one of them were actually in my grade, so I really wouldn’t be catching up with anyone at my Michigan school reunion. I’ve done all I can to disappear from reunion mailing lists from that school, but because I didn’t graduate from my Chicago school, the people there likely never even thought to include me in all the reunion and stay-in-touch lists.
This is an issue I’ve thought about during the 11 years since I moved away from Chicagoland, but sort of recently kinda put out of my mind completely. The other day, however, I was looking online at chicagosports.com, the online home of the Chicago Tribune’s sports section. There was an ad for Illinois high school sports clothing.
Curious to see if I could find anything from my Chicago area school, I searched. My search was to no avail, and I didn’t feel like adding my school, so I googled my old school to see if I could buy anything from them directly.
Once at my school’s website, I got distracted. Rather than searching for clothing with my school colors and mascot name, I found the alumni section and then made my way to the Class of ‘98 subsection.
Among the information I found was a list of my friends and people I talked to a lot in classes whose contact information was missing. If I had never moved, I think my name might be on that list, too. It’s kind of the generic-type kid thing to do. The irony, though, is that I’d love to be on that list.
After I was forced to leave, I realized pretty quickly that I missed that place and those people.
I still do.
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