Class Reunion

Filed Under Friends, Me, Thoughts | 4 Comments

Bailey JUST woke up in the next room but I want to get my thoughts out about this. In the meantime, I can hear her yelling Neener Neener Neener, which is her new favorite sound.

Anyway. My ten year high school class reunion was last weekend. At first I thought about going. I mean, high school was fine. All I really did was party and hang out with my friends and I did enough schoolwork to get by, but not enough to get in the way of my life… overall I have good memories… so anyway I was like, “Oooh a reunion! I’ll get to see all my old friends! They will all have babies and we can be mommy friends!” Then I started realizing this wasn’t so realistic. If ten years have passed and we haven’t talked, there is probably a reason.

I drifted apart from a lot of my high school friends while I was away at college. I got really involved with my sorority and life on campus and all that stuff. I was only three hours away but I only came home like twice a semester a lot of the time. I mean seriously, what 19-year-old wants to miss a weekend filled with barhopping and happy hours and take out food and sleeping late and hanging out at the gym, just to go sit at their parents house? Not me. I am bad about letting friendships fall apart. If I don’t talk to someone or see them regularly, I don’t really try to put effort into the friendship. I figure if it was worth staying friends, it wouldn’t take so much work.

Now that I am older, I see that most friendships do require work. A lot of them are “easy” as far as being friends, but hard as far as finding time to spend together. Now I am more mature about it and plan ahead and try to make those difficult “I know I haven’t seen you in nine months” type phone calls. (For example, I went out to lunch with Paige today, and literally I haven’t seen her since last Thanksgiving. But it was good catching up and I hope this time it’s not so long in between.) Back then, I didn’t bother.

SO all this to say, I really have one friend from high school. Yeah, I know I talk about her a lot so I am not even mentioning her name in this post. There was another girl who we weren’t really good friends with in high school but became friends with later… then once again became not-friends… Then there’s another girl who I see at stuff like baby showers and she’s fun to talk to for like an hour, but after that time there’s really nothing left to say for either of us and we both go our own ways again. Then there is one girl who I just recently got in touch with again and we are tentatively making plans to get together.

None of these girls wanted to go to the reunion, so I decided I didn’t really want to go by myself. I didn’t want to try to figure out who to talk to, only to find out that we had nothing in common. As far as curiosity- well I catch up with most of them on Facebook and we message two or three times and that is all taken care of. I’ve seen pictures of their boyfriend or kids, we’ve talked about careers… or my lack of career… i have gained weight since high school (although judging by the reunion pictures, oh Lord, some people have REALLY gained weight even in the last year or so! HELLO Leptovox…) and I try to dress somewhat cute but really I’m not into fashion all that much now… I wasn’t up for the competition or the dress up game at the reunion. My husband didn’t know anyone who would be there and it would be boring for him. So we never registered. At a few moments I thought “maybe I should…” but knew I didn’t really want to.

This week, I saw pictures on Facebook. Some people look the same. Some people look great. Others look like a fat, sloppy, tired, or trashy version of their former self. There was a weird guy in the background who kept flicking off the camera. Looking at these people, I felt a few fond memories. I saw girls I used to be close to, who I haven’t talked to in like eight years. It made me smile, seeing their faces. And at that moment, I realized that was all I wanted. Just a few memories. I have those. I didn’t feel a connection to those girls. I could have chatted for an evening, gone my own way, and not looked back. Just like I didn’t look back ten years ago when I moved away to school. I guess that’s just me. So I saved $100 or so, and didn’t bore Jonathon for an evening. And I got to show Jonathon the pictures and comment and laugh and smile and tell stories, which is all I would have done that evening.

I hope that I have stronger friendships now, that I wouldn’t just turn away and not care. I think adult friendships ARE stronger, because they require more work. You get deeper than just surface, boy, school, party talk. More than “the three b’s of a good party.” I had a few friends who were more than that but most were just that. I hope my friends now would keep me accountable and try to stay in touch with me, but you never know.

If you made it this far, I am impressed. I know this was rambly but I wanted to get these thoughts down. Now, I am going to get my kid. She is in her crib, “spelling” her name. There are letters above her bed and she points to them and says “E, I, A, E, A…” because I always spell her name out for her when we look at the letters.

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