We grew up watching sitcoms, movies, hearing stories and reading books about the 10 and 20 year reunions. Typically they’re giant surprise parties. “Can you believe how much weight she gained?”, “He’s still living at home?”, “I never thought he of all people would be that successful”. That’s the kind of stuff we grew up hearing. But now that slide show of pictures that was going to guffaw everyone is played out everyday. The weight, the jobs, the families – they’re common knowledge. Putting the surprise party away, what does the reunion become?
That’s my question and point of discussion. We don’t need to have reunions for the surprise anymore. The catching up part that was really the purpose of the reunions is not really a good reason to have them. So, what reason could we have to gather a bunch of people that started their adult lives on the same day, in the same place wearing the same mortar board hat? Maybe we could do something philanthropic? Something for the school we graduated from, perhaps.
What do we wish we’d had the day we graduated? Is there some knowledge that would have been useful had it been passed on to us then? What do we have that any other group of people don’t have? What impact can we make? How can we forever change the purpose of the high school reunion?
Let’s do something that will make us proud to have attended the reunion AND something that will be so cool – people will not want to miss it. Let’s be the Class of ’92 – the class that had class.