Musings on a Reunion

 I attended a very large high school (it might have been the largest in the state) outside of Philadelphia.  I had not gone through the public school system, but had attended a Catholic parochial elementary school, and my first year of high school (ninth grade) at a private girls' school.  

So when I transferred to Upper Darby High School as a tenth grader I was very much the odd man out...  Friendships had been formed in elementary school, enjoyed and cemented in junior high.  I did make friends:  There were lots of chums I met in classes and homeroom.  I had lunch with Dee and Michele everyday, took the trolley with Richie to early morning choral rehearsals, sang in the Concert Choir with Roger and Richard M, attended plays in Philadelphia...

My husband and I attended my 15th reunion.  I saw folks that I recognized, but no one with whom I had been close attended.  In fact, the folks I had been closest to had seemingly fallen off the face of the Earth.  After we married 53 years ago, we moved to my husband's 'stomping grounds' outside of Baltimore, Maryland.  I always envied that at any moment he could run into someone he went to school with; someone from his past.  I missed that.

Fast forward a decade or three.  I had tried contacting a few classmates.  Dee made it clear she didn't want to be found; R never answered notes and invitations I had sent to him and his wife; Roger had died out in San Francisco (from what and when I never did learn).  R2 did contact me.  Now retired from a distinguished career in the military he lives not far from us in Virginia.  He visited me at the school where I was teaching, we had a great lunch, and a sweet time catching up with one another, and then I never heard from him again.  Lest I be misunderstood, these were not romantic interests, but a connection to a time and place I missed.

Our reunion is scheduled for October.  Two of these folks will be there.  I'd go but it would be for all the wrong reasons:  primarily, I'd want to know why they ghosted me, and while I'm curious, I realize it's not that important, that I'm not important, at least to them.