\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0A class reunion is a great opportunity to get caught up on one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classmates.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s class, which graduated 30-plus students, had the largest showing, around 20, of four consecutive classes, quite a feat inasmuch as the class of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc61 is the oldest of the four.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Bonnie told me she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d completely forgotten a couple of the attendees, and in fairness, said a different couple of classmates couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t place her either.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0She needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel bad. At the 20-year reunion of that class, in 1981, attended by roughly the same people, I wanted to test their sincerity.<\/p>\n
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0As I met each one, I mentioned their name (fed to me by Bonnie) and announced, “Hi. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you remember me?”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0At 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we? Yeah, I remember you . . . uh . . . well.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0None of this happened. Not a single student pretended to have remembered me.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0To a man (and woman) they all made it clear that my face just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ring a bell. Nor should it, unless they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d visited Immaculate Conception School in Las Vegas. And how would they have felt if a classmate were to have said, “Sorry. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember you.” That translates to: “You were such a dweeb in high school that you made absolutely no impression.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0You can say I set myself up for rejection, 25 years ago. At least the Red Devils were honest. If not blunt.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Last month\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reunion didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feature any do-you-know-who-I-am? games.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Rather, 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.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0One spouse, who said she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen my picture in the paper but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember when or where, engaged me in conversation. She was eager to tell me she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d 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.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0For 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.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And that she never asked for novocaine when the dentist was drilling, as she chose to transcend dental medication.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Not a bit.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I kept expecting her to turn the conversation around and say, just for a second, “Now, tell me about yourself.” That didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen. No matter what I asked her, she answered in detail, then gave that pause that tells me she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ready for the next question.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Just as strange was the feeling she conveyed that nothing was off-limits.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Often, when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Had she asked, “And you?” just once, I would have inferred this was a genuine conversation. As a result, she never even learned my name.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Now none of this is sparked by hurt feelings. Although I began the conversation with the expectation that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be any in the remaining hour and a half.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0So I gave in and kept feeding her questions I knew she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d answer without so much as an “\u00c2\u00bfy tu?”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Although I engaged her in talk for a long time, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0People 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.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0People ask, “How can people bare their souls to total strangers?” But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the crux. I believe my seatmate was never able to share her feelings with her husband, parents, significant other, children or anyone else. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why she deemed it safe to provide me with an unsolicited account of things most of us consider quite private.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And besides, the chances were nil that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever see each other again, unless, however, we met at the luggage carousel. If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been a wind-up toy, programmed to respond with “How interesting” every 18 seconds, my seatmate would have managed just fine.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0When 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the alternative? Would they have preferred appearing foolish in front of friends?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard about you. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the one that tied up my wife for hours. She told me you barely gave her a chance to speak”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0A class reunion is a great opportunity to get caught up on one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classmates. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s class, which graduated 30-plus students, had the largest showing, around 20, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}