A class reunion is a great opportunity to get caught up on one’s classmates.
It wasn’t exactly my classmates who caught me up, but rather those of the Springer High School classes of 1961-64, of which my wife Bonnie was a member. Bonnie’s class, which graduated 30-plus students, had the largest showing, around 20, of four consecutive classes, quite a feat inasmuch as the class of ‘61 is the oldest of the four.
Bonnie told me she’d completely forgotten a couple of the attendees, and in fairness, said a different couple of classmates couldn’t place her either.
She needn’t feel bad. At the 20-year reunion of that class, in 1981, attended by roughly the same people, I wanted to test their sincerity.
As I met each one, I mentioned their name (fed to me by Bonnie) and announced, “Hi. Don’t you remember me?”
At this point, as a graduate of a different high school, four years earlier, I expected at least one of them to stumble something like, “Oh, yes . . . you were that . . . uh . . . great guy. Yeah, we sure had a good time in study hall, didn’t we? Yeah, I remember you . . . uh . . . well.”
None of this happened. Not a single student pretended to have remembered me.
To a man (and woman) they all made it clear that my face just didn’t ring a bell. Nor should it, unless they’d visited Immaculate Conception School in Las Vegas. And how would they have felt if a classmate were to have said, “Sorry. I don’t remember you.” That translates to: “You were such a dweeb in high school that you made absolutely no impression.”
You can say I set myself up for rejection, 25 years ago. At least the Red Devils were honest. If not blunt.
Last month’s reunion didn’t feature any do-you-know-who-I-am? games.
Rather, I joined a host of spouses who, like in-laws, were being ignored, while the true classmates compared salaries, grandkids, weights, waistlines, SUV mileage and Botox injections.
One spouse, who said she’d seen my picture in the paper but didn’t remember when or where, engaged me in conversation. She was eager to tell me she’d traveled far to get to this reunion. The reporter instinct in me made me ask her about trip details, family, occupation, education and whether she was an Oakland Raider fan.
For the next 90 minutes, the conversation became an interview. At no time did she reciprocate. Not once. For example, I asked about her health. She practically traversed the gastronomical galaxy to explain that her gallstones were the size of basketballs and her calcium deposits had been written up in the latest medical and dental journals.
And that she never asked for novocaine when the dentist was drilling, as she chose to transcend dental medication.
Now I’ve got ailments too: occasional migraines, a recurring knee pain and a sometimes stiff neck. I naively assumed a spouse of an alumnus engaged in a long exchange with an unrepentant reporter would be a bit curious. She wasn’t. Not a bit.
I kept expecting her to turn the conversation around and say, just for a second, “Now, tell me about yourself.” That didn’t happen. No matter what I asked her, she answered in detail, then gave that pause that tells me she’s ready for the next question.
Just as strange was the feeling she conveyed that nothing was off-limits.
Often, when I’ve become too inquisitive, the person retorts with, “Why do you want to know?” or “Are you writing a book?” None of this happened. She disposed of my 20 questions and primed herself for 20 more.
Had she asked, “And you?” just once, I would have inferred this was a genuine conversation. As a result, she never even learned my name.
Now none of this is sparked by hurt feelings. Although I began the conversation with the expectation that she’d actually converse, it soon became obvious only one person would be asking the questions. And I realized that after 10 minutes of replies without exchange there wouldn’t be any in the remaining hour and a half.
So I gave in and kept feeding her questions I knew she’d answer without so much as an “¿y tu?”
Although I engaged her in talk for a long time, I can’t say I know her any better. I wonder: Is she always this way? Did she play a trick on me, vowing not to return any questions and seeing how long she could play the game? Did she have a lust for telling her story?
People talk about the Airline Passenger Syndrome, in which a stranger sitting next to you bares his or her soul. It happened to me once, and the tenor of the unbelievably intimate revelations made me try to slip under the seat. With the aplomb and cool of a mechanic explaining how to replace plugs, points and condenser, she discussed how she chose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
People ask, “How can people bare their souls to total strangers?” But that’s the crux. I believe my seatmate was never able to share her feelings with her husband, parents, significant other, children or anyone else. That’s why she deemed it safe to provide me with an unsolicited account of things most of us consider quite private.
And besides, the chances were nil that we’d ever see each other again, unless, however, we met at the luggage carousel. If I’d been a wind-up toy, programmed to respond with “How interesting” every 18 seconds, my seatmate would have managed just fine.
When I taught beginning speech in college, I often heard students admit that they were afraid because of the prospect of “making a fool of myself in front of a bunch of total strangers.” But what’s the alternative? Would they have preferred appearing foolish in front of friends?
I’ll continue to play the part of the inveterate reporter at class reunions, always expecting repeats of the conversation-turned-monologue I experienced in September. But what will I say if at the next gathering some burly man exits his Hummer and says, “I’ve heard about you. You’re the one that tied up my wife for hours. She told me you barely gave her a chance to speak”?