I recently returned from my 30th high school reunion in Bryan, Texas.  It’s the third reunion we’ve had, and I’ve been to them all.  For some reason, whenever one of these portentous events looms on the horizon,  there’s never any question in my mind that I’m going to attend.

I’ve enjoyed all three events, but had a particularly good time at this one. It’s puzzling because I have many, many friends in my current life who consider the fact that I go to my high school reunions at best quaint, and at worse ill-advised and borderline pathetic. 

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this issue.  Why DO I enjoy these reunions so much?

It’s not because I’m one of those people who live in the past.  I’m not.  I don’t have to look back on high school like a former star athlete who’s never done anything else worth doing in the years since graduation.   

On the other hand, I did really have a good time in high school.  My school was large enough that the chances were good you could find a group you felt comfortable with.  Getting good grades was hip in my day, so I was friends with all the kids in the “college prep” classes, as well as the speech and drama nerds and, of course (and most importantly) band members.

I did manage to have a wonderful junior and senior year, considering all of the activities I was involved in.  But this isn’t why I love going back to the reunions.

And it certainly isn’t because I miss the town.  On the contrary, I haven’t lived in the town, even for a summer, since the year I graduated.  I never liked the town, which I felt was small and boring.  I did a lot of driving around town in the couple of days before the reunion.  It’s now medium-sized and boring.  So it’s not geographical nostalgia that brings me back.

And it’s certainly not because I’m still friends with a whole pile of folks I graduated with.  Sure, I love seeing them and I wish them well.  But I’m probably current with less than ten of them.

So why then?  Why was it so much fun to go see how much we’ve aged, to see the formerly gorgeous folks look like any other 48 year olds?  Why was it fun to see all the couples who are still married, like homecoming queen and head cheerleader Jamie and football player Larry?  Like Most LIkely to Succeed Walter and his still-lovely Sara?  Like resolutely intellectual John and Lynne?

Why was it so much fun to see Rissie, looking like a million dollars and currently head of the parole board of the state’s largest prison?  Or Sherilynn Jenkins, dangerously attractive and doing PR for the local university?

Will I see many of these folks again before the 35th or 40th reuion?  In most cases, sadly, probably not.  But that doesn’t really matter.

The value I think these types of events have is that they are a ceremonial way for us to honor our past while celebrating our present.  We all get to show up and say, “Hey!  I’m still alive and kicking, and you knew me when!” 

Whether we’re real estate moguls, like Sam, or doctors like Caroline and Pat and Ed, or local business owners like Stanley or whatever the hell it is that I am, going to the reunion is a way of marking how far we’ve come.  It’s a celebration of our survival, our common history, and our hopes for the future.

Finally, the greatest thing about the 30th reunion is that thirty years has a way of washing away all, and I mean ALL, bullshit.  There were no cliques, or old feuds, or rivalries, or racial or economic or even political boundaries.  After all these years, what we had in common loomed much larger than what our differences were.  That was a nice feeling.

What breaks my heart is that in this era of political scapegoating and division and polarity, we can’t all realize as a country that the same exact thing is true of us as a people.