Why Reunions?

It is summer and a season for reunions. There are family reunions, friends of the lake reunions, sports friend’s reunions and finally the dreaded high school graduating class reunion. My wife’s 40^th was just this past week and her best friend from Phoenix, Arizona came to Kansas City to celebrate. It was the 40^th reunion of their 1970 Raytown High School graduation class.

The reunion was 3 days of golf, luncheons, dances, dinners and a 5K run. Their 30^th did a 10K run. As an aside, my 50^th does a 1K walk. There were more than 400 in their graduating class and about 150 attended the various reunion activities. The dinner was fried chicken and mashed potatoes buffet style. Kansas City always does reunion events first class.

Re-unions infer there have been previous unions. And I suspect in many cases there were. My wife said she sat at the girl’s table and the guys came around sat down and talked. Sounded like a typical high school dance to me. Some brought their spouses. If I had been invited, I would have declined anyway. I prefer hanging by my neck until death to answering the same questions over and over again. What do you do? Where do you live? How many kids do you have? A series of 3X5 cards with pre-printed answers would be the rage.

But then what other typical life benchmarks do we have? I prefer some fun questions and awesome awards. For example, an award for who has the most toys? Your own G-5 jet is an automatic winner. Who has been married the most times? Who has traveled the most miles? Who has risen to the highest political office? Who has done the most for charities? Who is still the most athletic? Who weighs the same they weighed in high school? My wife would win that hands down. Who made the most money? Are not these the real things we want to know? Not from the standpoint of envy, but merely to see if the good guys or girls, really do win.

And of course who has died? It would be satisfying to know that our living the healthy Christian life has been rewarded by our outliving the drinkers and the druggies. We passed all those dreadful things up based on high-quality advice and if the drinkers and the druggies are still going strong, then at least we could make some life adjustments going forward. It is not too late to turn our backs on that advice and party hard the rest of the way out.

Why do we have reunions? You tell me? I hated high school. I was a geek, unpopular and my most entertaining activity was the chess club. I also wore those crazy gold buttoned uniforms with the 12” high plume decorated hats and marched in the band at the football game half-time. I never forgot that the football players took the girls home while I took my trumpet home. I would have gladly traded my trumpet for a girl, but it did not work that way.

Despite it all, reunions are here to stay. We all wonder how we compare with the people we knew 40-50 years ago? I just do not know why. For me I am just glad to be invited so I can fain gross disinterest in any comparison, but down deep I really would like to know. Particularly what happened to the team’s quarterback? Did he really get the cutest girl? Did he really live happily ever after?

I would love to know that trumpets trumped touchdowns. In my case and looking at my wife, I know they do.