What do you call a room full of familiar strangers and a girl called Angela, who used to be a boy called Angus? A school reunion, that’s what. Dixon had one recently.
So it was my school reunion recently. We gathered as much in trepidation as in excitement. At this stage of life, it’s by no means a given that everyone is even still alive.
It’s been a while since we attended the high school valedictory dinner, feeling all grown-up and ready to take on the world. But was it really 25 years ago? Sometimes it feels much longer ago than that; at other times it seems like it was yesterday. Right now it feels like it was last weekend.
It was actually the 26-year reunion; a first attempt to stage it last year was stymied by the AFL Grand Final replay. More people wanted to stay home and watch the footy than catch up with old classmates. That’s what you get for going to school in Melbourne.
So you stand about, slightly awkwardly, clutching a beer and making small talk with a group of people who are simultaneously deeply, fundamentally familiar to you but, now, almost complete strangers, too. I subscribe to the idea that if there’s someone from school you want to stay in touch with, you’ll stay in touch with them. In that respect, a reunion is a slightly strained get-together. We have nothing in common except our parents sent us to the same school.
You can divide your former classmates into categories.
There are those who have positively bloomed in their adult years, even though you’d never have picked that from the vantage point of Year 12. There are the kids you were certain would take on the world, but who turn out to be living in a cardboard box with 12 cats and who you have to buy drinks for all night and then give them some money so they can get the train “home”.
There’s a group you never wanted to see again, who turn up and are just as obnoxious and annoying as you remember. And there are the kids you never gave the time of day to (nor they to you) and who turn out to be funny and engaging and living really interesting lives.
Inevitably, there are the old girlfriends, too. They fall into two categories: those you have not given a second’s thought to since you left school but about whom your wife harbours a completely irrational jealousy; and those you think about regularly, but your wife knows nothing about.
At first it’s all quite confronting, but after a few beers something seems to click and it’s like you were right back there at school – except several kilograms heavier in most cases (lighter in some), drunk (although that condition wasn’t completely foreign to some of us in our later school years), and in one notable case, now a woman.
Some of the old cliques reappear surprisingly quickly, particularly among the girls. They can still be marvellously, hilariously bitchy: “What’s your name again? It’s what? Oh yes, I think I remember you. You always had your hair in those perfect pigtails.” There’s a telling pause. “Yes, that’s me. And I remember you, too. You were the class bike.”
Among the men it’s a bit different, but then again, men can always find some common ground: football, cars, girls, hardware stores, movies/TV.
I recommend attending school reunions, but with an escape plan. A small group of us got together beforehand to settle on a signal that could be given if one of us was overwhelmed by the need to flee. We agreed that it would be one out, all out. It was just as well the signal was never given, because I’ve forgotten what it was. I recall it having something to do with a baboon. Or a balloon. Probably a balloon, now that I think about it. A monkey would have been ridiculous.
It’s all quite wonderful, in its own, slightly bizarre way, to discover how these lives have found their own course. Most of us have picked up partners, kids and (what we laughingly call) careers along the way. There are people we care about, and who care about us. We might have nothing in common any more with most of the people in this room but nevertheless, and whether we like it or not, they are part and parcel of where we came from, and what we’ve become.
Whatever that is.
Dixon Bainbridge can be contacted via Professional Planner HUB – www.professionalplanner.com.au/hub – but only if your name is Angela today and was Angela at school.
