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Back to campus The Same Place at the Same TimeBy Rick Horowitz
And the question for this morning: Can you call it a "reunion" when you barely knew them the first time around? It's a superheated Saturday on a small New England campus, and we're sitting on the grass and the wood chips, this rump contingent of the Legendary Class of 19-such-and-such, in front of a creaky old brick building slated for imminent demolition. We ignore the symbolism and enjoy our picnic lunch; there's shade here, and the hint of a breeze -- no better place anywhere for former college classmates to renew old ties. Except, of course, that there are no old ties. I do a quick head count: Of the dozen or so people spread out around me, people who shared the same tiny space with me for four crucial years, I had actually spoken, during that entire period, with exactly one of them. And it still feels totally right. We had been there together, even if we hadn't quite been together. Good enough -- same as always. I admit it: I'm a reunion junkie. I can't help myself; I just love these once-every-five-years returns to the old haunts -- even if most of the "official" reunion program doesn't take place in the old haunts at all, but in buildings that weren't even there when we were. And even if most of the people who show up for these things aren't the people who filled those formative days and nights way back when. "Going to see lots of your old friends?" Everyone who heard I was heading back asked the same question. "Going to see lots of your old friends?" "I doubt it," I'd say. "Not a problem." I've been through this reunion routine before, and I know how it works. Sometimes the old friends make it, and sometimes they don't. When they do, I have fun with the old friends. And when they don't, I have fun with the new friends -- classmates I've first met at previous reunions, classmates I'll meet for the first time any minute now. If history is any guide, they'll be friendly and funny, interesting and interested, and we'll have a wonderful time with each other. And that's exactly how it went. It was comfortable. Comforting. Refreshing. Renewing. Nobody was pecking to some old pecking order; the former cheerleader was talking to the former drone, the activist was making nice with the therapist. Nobody was playing the (supposedly) standard reunion games -- the resume runoff, the bankbook display, the offspring brag. It was lovely, start to finish. It's always lovely. Is it simply that we're more socially adept as grownups than we were at 18? That we've learned to talk the small talk with practically anyone? What if all these friendly, funny, interesting and interested people had gone to other schools? What if we'd somehow been thrown together decades later for a weekend anyway? Would it have been any less a hoot? Good questions. And the answer? Beats me. What I do know is that we were there together, once upon a campus. That we had started on the path to adulthood at the same place, at the same time. Somehow that still counted for something. And it wasn't just small talk either. We turned to each other, as we've done at each of these gatherings, with the big stuff, too. The current struggles with home and health and family. The potholes looming in the road ahead. Those gnawing questions still unresolved from that distant planet of our youth. Plus -- suffusing everything -- the slightest whiff of mortality, the ever-expanding list of classmates and loved ones gone. We talked about all of it. We had been together once, and so we could talk to one another about the big things as well as the small. We could also laugh and hug and eat and drink and dance and pose for pictures, pictures in front of a creaky old brick building soon to be a memory. If the gods are still smiling, we'll find another shady, breezy spot five years from now. We were together once. That's all that matters. Posted 7/4/00. Fresh
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Rick Horowitz