'If I’ve not seen these people for over thirty years, maybe there’s a reason.'
That was my response to my sister when she asked if I was looking forward to the evening ahead. She was driving me to my secondary school reunion, which had been arranged in the year that we all turned 50. My status that day alternated between excitement and mild anxiety. What had they all achieved in life? What would everybody look like now? How would I measure up? Apparently, one guy’s slightly jaded prediction of the uptake for the event was that the women would only come if they were slim, and the guys if they were successful. It was said in jest, but surely there was a dollop of truth in his statement.
We were meeting up back in the town where we went to school. I arrived early at the venue to support my friend who was the organiser. I met her outside, on the imposing stone stairs of the hotel. Back in the day, the place had been managed by the parents of one of our school pals. I realised that it held a lot of firsts for me. It was where I had my first kiss, where I first got drunk, and where I would meet the boy who gave me my first broken heart. It was late summer, and it had been a truly glorious day. Did the weather augur well for the evening ahead? We’d soon find out.
We went inside and sat at our reserved tables in the corner, somewhat nervously wondering who, if anyone, would turn up. Our school was a large, comprehensive school in central Scotland that served a vast hinterland of countryside, hamlets, and villages. We had over 400 pupils in our year alone. Surely the power of Facebook couldn’t fail in the face of such numbers? After a very long half hour, the first attendees began to trickle in. Amongst them were two girls who had been my friends at primary, but who had been in a different social orbit once we got to high school. After a nearly forty-year break in our relationship, there was no awkwardness, just friendly hugs, and immediate transportation back to 1975, chatting about old teachers, gala days, and our hideous purple and yellow school uniform.
Around 30 people turned up that evening. We were not all slim, and as for success, well, how do you define success? It’s a very subjective matter. The questions we asked each other weren’t so much designed to establish material achievements, but more about affirming emotional status. Do you still have your mum and dad? Do you have kids? Are you living locally? If we had reunited at forty, certainly at thirty, I think the conversations might have had a different slant. Maybe there would have been more peacocking about how big the house, how posh the car, and whether or not director status had been achieved at work. But with fifty years’ life experience, it seemed we had largely learned what true success meant. Perhaps there is a distillation of decency over time. Whatever the case, it was a surprisingly enjoyable evening. There were a lot of laughs, a lot of reminiscing, and a lot of old friends reacquainted.