Sixty years since high school? Can’t be!
The letter was so upbeat, it almost chirped.
“Come back!” it urged. “Relive All Those Great Memories! Bask in the Glow!”
It was an invitation to my 60th high school reunion. Gulp.
Wince. Run fingers through white hair.
Have 60 years really passed? They have.
Are most of my classmates still alive? They are.
Are most of them planning to attend? They are.
Am I planning to attend? Wouldn’t miss it for love or money.
Sixty isn’t as round a number as 50, and that reunion was a blast and a half. So, Number 60 should be festive and the mood should be light, even if some of us now own titanium knees and sport toupees.
Bring on the grandchildren pix!
And bring on all the tales of yesteryear, which get better with age, even if we don’t.
About how he wanted to invite her to the senior dance but she never gave him the time of day.
About how that young first-year Spanish teacher made female hearts flutter.
About how bobby socks and penny loafers were standard equipment.
About how dopey it was that girls couldn’t wear slacks to school unless the mercury dipped to 22 degrees.
About how some kid brought a record to a party by some singer named Elvis Presley — and it turned heads.
About how we were caught between two eras — not exactly Eisenhower and not exactly Kennedy.
About how we traded surefire ways to make pimples disappear.
About how the boys bragged about having kissed their best girls in the movies.
About how the girls said no, no, it never happened — even when it had.
About how cars had tail fins and trunks big enough to carry a good-sized suburb.
About how math was tough for everyone, and English class produced endless soupy, silly poems.
About student government meetings that always ended with…RESOLVED, we demand better food at lunch.
About study halls where the books soon gave way to snickering and spitballs.
About how half of our homes did not contain a television set.
About cigarettes. We smoked them when our parents weren’t looking, so we could look and act like adults. We never considered the health consequences.
About jet planes. They had just been invented. Suddenly, California was no longer on the dark side of the moon.
About Princess phones. Every girl who wanted to show off had one. Usually pink.
About blue jeans. They weren’t allowed at school. Too casual. So, weekend parties were a festival of denim.
About reputations that would last for decades. For example, Your Faithful Correspondent had great trouble pronouncing the French word for “street.” So he was inducted into — and still inhabits — The La Roo Club.
About cliques. They were everywhere. Sixty years later, they are nowhere. All walls have been forgotten and forgiven.
About parents who insisted that Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra were the archdeacons of pop music. We made sure to guffaw when they weren’t listening.
About college. We all expected to go. We all went. And at every reunion — including, no doubt, Number 60 — we will all admit that we couldn’t get into our alma maters today.
And about togetherness. We have helped each other across many rough patches in life. We are amazingly close, thanks in large part to an e-mail chat group. We expect and intend to remain that way.
Of course, no reunion could be complete without subplots.
Will the classmate who said we were all bourgeois and shallow show up and seek forgiveness? Will the basketball players who slacked on defense finally admit that they had?
And will She be there?
If you have to ask who that is, you must have missed the capital S.
She, as in Girl Friend Number One.
We parted on messy terms. We never reconciled. I haven’t seen her in 60 years. She won’t be there…Will she? Won’t she? Maybe? Please?
So go reunions. So will go our 60th. We are older, wiser and frozen in time. Truly, we are joined at the hip.
Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.
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