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class of 1997

I flew back to Tucson earlier this month for my ten-year high school reunion.

It was hard hard not to approach the whole thing with a certain degree of ambivalence. (Plus, I’ve seen Grosse Pointe Blank. Many times.) What is the point of this ritual, beyond serving as some kind of benchmark of how you’ve progressed (or not) since high school? Besides, I’m still in touch with most of the people I really wanted to keep in touch with.

That said, the ten-year benchmark thing is all one big head game. Ultimately, it’s your life, and you’re the one who has to live it. It’s probably not all that healthy to come into an event like this with worries about being “judged.” (What is this? High school?) And as far as the “keeping in touch” went, there were a number of people that I was genuinely close with in high school that I lost track of after graduation. I was hopeful that at least some of them would be at the reunion.

I ultimately decided to go because it was a good excuse to visit my family and have a bit of a girls night out with Danielle and Sarah. And maybe I’d get to see some familiar faces.

It was a strange, awkward experience, but I think I’m glad I went.

I ended up going to two of the three scheduled events: the Friday night Homecoming football game and the Saturday night dinner / dance (skipping the Sunday afternoon family picnic).

The Homecoming game was a nice warmup / icebreaker. There was a section of bleachers cordoned off for the Class of 1997 alums, and some very nice (and very young-looking — yikes) current students gave us tickets for free sodas at the concession stand. After the halftime show (an attempt at a Beatles medley, including “Magical Mystery Tour” and “Eleanor Rigby”), our student hosts gave us a tour of the school. During our tenure, parts of campus were constantly under construction, so it was interesting to see just how much things and changed (and just how nice some of the new buildings are).

And then there was the main event…

We checked in at a table just outside the main ballroom. Arrayed on that table were name tags, featuring our senior yearbook photos. It really did feel like a moment out of Grosse Pointe Blank:

Arlene: I had the yearbook pictures put on so everybody knows who everybody was!
Martin Blank: Special torture!

Sadly, the organizers wouldn’t let us past without our name tags. So on they went.

I spent the next few hours mixing and mingling a little bit, though mainly keeping to one side of the ballroom. I know it’s part of the whole point of a reunion, but the whole “what are you doing now?” question gets a bit stale after a while, treading dangerously close to the standard D.C. “so what do you do?” conversation-opener. I never got the feeling, though, that it was a competition or an occasion to pass judgment; everyone I talked to just seemed generally nice and genuinely interested in catching up at least a little.

Disappointingly few members of my old “nerd herd” ended up coming, though I did catch snippets of info here and there about how certain former classmates were doing. I did have a couple really good conversations that I wish could have gone on longer; hopefully it won’t be another ten years until we catch up again.

By the end of the night, I was a bit reunioned out, so I pulled up a chair and people-watched instead. I’d said hello to the people I used to know, and all that was left was a blur of names and faces that I barely remembered from what felt like a lifetime ago.

More Photos from the MVHS Reunion »