Class reunions make us take step backward

This column is dedicated to all those people out there who choose not to attend high school, college or other such reunions.

I believe that these people should be respected, honored if only for their convictions, and, basically, left the heck alone about this.

I believe this because I am these people. Why can’t all you reunion-goers leave us alone? Why must you judge us, try to convert us? I think I speak on behalf of all my anti-reunion brethren when I say to you: Go on, now! Go to your reunions. We don’t care if you go, or if you do or do not have a particularly good time. We don’t care! Why do you care so much about us?

Harrumph. Do I sound like a curmudgeon? Yeah, well, the pressure is getting to me.

Marie is calling, leaving daily messages. She’s my oldest friend in the world, having been my link to sanity during high school and my soul mate through college. I know every nuance of her voice. I know when “calling just to say hello” is a lie, and when “I’ve been thinking so much about you lately” is bunk. She is calling to beg me to attend our college reunion. This is a biggie, one of those years divisible by five, so I’m wise to expect some fairly heavy lobbying this time around. In other words: I am not calling her back.

We have been through this many times before. Because we graduated from the same high school and college, we’re on the same rotation for reunion galas for not one but two schools. She’s always delighted with the party news. She hangs the invitations on her bulletin board, circles the dates. I say, “Ugh,” and throw them in the trash.

Does that make her a better person? I contend not. Not! Do I sound defensive?

Yeah, well, people who accept party invitations are generally thought to be better adjusted than those who hide in their homes with blankets over their heads.

I am not hiding from my reunion. I am not embarrassed, or ashamed to show up. I simply don’t like going backward. (I can’t sit on backward-facing seats on trains, either.) I am good standing still. I am good going forward. I have tried to explain this to Marie: I am simply done with wherever I’ve been. I can’t redo any of it. I am not who I was. I don’t even remember who I was. Just the thought of going to a reunion gives me a kind of cosmic motion sickness. Does that make me a bad person?

Oh, brother. Here she is again. I see her number on the caller ID. “Oh, don’t waste your breath,” I say, answering.

“Oh, come on!” she says. “It’ll be fun! Don’t you want to see how people turned out?”

“No,” I say, unwilling to let her drag me into this topic of conversation.

“John Peterson!” she says, evoking a name I haven’t heard in some 20 years. “Wouldn’t it be great to see what became of him?”

“If I want to get in touch with John Peterson, I’ll call the alumni office and ask for his contact information,” I say.

“Kevin Bianchini!” she says, invoking one of her former crushes. “I would faint if I ran into him. Do you think he’s bald by now?”

“No,” I say. She tries enticing me with other names, to no avail. I remind her that I’ve never been to a single reunion of any kind, and I don’t intend to break my streak now.

“This is crazy. You sound like Donna,” she says, informing me that this mutual friend, whom I haven’t seen in more than a year, has likewise declined the invitation.

“Oh, I would love to see Donna,” I say. She says Donna said the same thing about me. “Then how about Donna and I have dinner, and you go to the reunion and then tell us who you ran into,” I say.

“I don’t know why I’m friends with you people,” she says. “Don’t you want to integrate the phases of your life?”

“No,” I say. Nor am I buying the fancy integration theory. “You just think I’m a party pooper,” I say. We recall together plenty of times in college when, to Marie’s horror, I actually preferred a good dose of alone time. She never got that; gathering with friends was always her preferred state. She needed study groups. I needed to hide in the basement to concentrate.

“We need to celebrate our differences,” I say. “Let that be our little reunion.”

“Here’s what we’ll do,” she says, still trying to rescue me from what she views as my continual descent into the land of the party pooped. “You hang up and think about this for a while. I want you to come up with five names of people from college you would like to see. Okay? That’s your assignment.”

“Okay,” I say, knowing I’ll do nothing of the sort. “And your assignment is to come up with five great things about staying home alone when you know everyone else is out socializing, okay?”

“We’ll talk later,” she says.

Right-o.