COMMENTARY: Class reunions: yea or nay?

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Let me check my calendar.”

“Meh.”

“You mean I still haven’t outlived all those #@%&lowlifes?”

As you doubtless know, those are the four main responses when a class reunion invitation arrives. (Close runner-up: “If I remember my eighth-grade civics teacher correctly, this first-class stamp cost almost as much as FDR’s New Deal.”)

Me? I had a wonderful time at the reunion of the Marshall County High School (Lewisburg, Tennessee) class of 1978 (our first in 17 years). But I know several people (including my brother) who have never attended a single one of their reunions.

For good or ill, school is a unique “lived experience” for each student. For some, it is a breathtaking blur of trophies, passionate romances and legendary antics. For others, K-12 is an eternity of unrequited love, detention hall, unshakeable nicknames and PE torture. (“*Gasp* Can’t I swap and get the breathtaking blur in place of the … breathtaking 100 laps?”)

Encountering long-unseen classmates can be a triggering event for people who hated school and still have nightmares about being cooped up studying the Pythagorean theorem or Dante’s Inferno. Ironically, they thought they were bettering themselves by snatching their diploma and going on to spend decades with the Landlord from Hell, the Cubicle from Hell and the in-laws from Hell.

Many alumni suffer from anxiety about running into their peers who were more attractive, more popular or more affluent than they were. But years of front-page divorces, downsizing, grim diagnoses and parental funerals can have a leveling effect.

And in case the years have NOT been unkind to your old frenemies, you can still puff out your chest and assert your dignity. (“I am not a loser! I have gained a pacemaker, a third mortgage and a stepson who promises to move out of the basement as soon as his old job at the AOL CD factory opens back up … ”)

Personalities can evolve, too. One classmate confided that he and some infamous buddies had acknowledged what (jerks) they had been in olden days. Granted, some bullies and blowhards never change. (“Sorry. I didn’t have room for photos of my grandkids in my wallet — but I do have this honkin’ big check from Publishers Clearing House. Help me unfold it.”)

Reunions can be fun for everyone, provided the right games are played. (“Hey, I found last year’s Easter egg! No, wait — it’s just a hapless spouse who wandered away from the Table of Misfit Plus-Ones.”)

Some reunion-despisers claim they might have enjoyed school more if they could have handpicked their classmates and teachers. When you feel that you were arbitrarily thrown together with ill-matched strangers by accident of birth date and place, it’s difficult to yearn for hanging out with their older selves.

I, on the other hand, honestly feel that God meant for me to have exactly the friends, acquaintances and rivals that I grew up with. Be true to yourself, but I’m certainly looking forward to my next reunion. Wouldn’t miss it for the … world’s largest ball of dryer lint having a festival that same weekend? Oooo …

And that’s when you know you’ve outlived all your #@%&punchlines.

Danny Tyree writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Newspaper Syndicate. Contact at tyreetyrades@aol.com.