It was one of those threads within the CA Class of ’84 Facebook
group that started small and then grew and grew and grew.
And this time it was really interesting.
With our thirtieth reunion just three months away, there’s
plenty of planning to do, plenty of pep-rallying to attempt (It won’t be fun if
we don’t all go!), and no end to the reminiscing. (The Development Department
would like me to insert a reminder here that there’s also supposed to be plenty
of fundraising happening. Reunion years are expected to inspire large
donations. Unfortunately, we seem to keep straying off-topic when the subject
of annual giving comes up.)
This particular thread quickly grew more interesting than
reminiscences about who sneaked in whose window (it was a boarding school) or
who spent which night in the boathouse (it was on a river) or who got drunk at
Louisa May Alcott’s birthplace (it was in Concord). One of my classmates posted
that she was putting together a playlist, and that got everyone talking about
music.
But it wasn’t quite what you might expect from the class of
’84. It wasn’t all Madonna or Wham or Culture Club. Because a lot of the people
I went to high school with had truly sophisticated taste in music, and so
listening to them reminisce is much more like taking a college-level class in
1980s musicology than spending an hour with the classic hits radio station.
X-Ray Spex. Mission of Burma. Adam Ant. Violent Femmes. I remember some of the music. In other cases,
I remember the band names but not the songs. Unsophisticated myself when it
comes to musical tastes, both then and now, I certainly don’t have anything to
add to the conversation about who saw which groups live (not to mention who
ended up drinking in a London pub with which members of the British Invasion).
But the conversation is interesting to me because it reminds me of what I like
best about our high school reunions: the moments when we transcend the
“Remember that night before the senior play” and “How did we ever get away with
what happened on the class trip” to delve into cultural touchstones.
Not that the reminiscing
isn’t entertaining – it’s one of the main reasons people attend reunions -- but
one thing that has always struck me about reunions is that by definition, they
expose you to the remarkable experience of being in a room with several dozen
people all born within a year of each other. Even without the shared memories of
the boathouse, the sneaking-out-through-the-window, or the Nantucket class
trip, I find it really interesting to share those cultural touchstone moments
that define us merely by age, rather than by experience or high school
popularity level.
I’m looking forward to our reunion in June for all of those
reasons: the fun of being with old friends, the chance to connect with so many
women and men with whom I have so much in common, and the reminiscing.
But it’s conversations like this thread about music that
remind me I have always learned so much from this really interesting group of
people. Thirty years after graduation, I
continue still to learn from them about music, and careers, and travel, and
child-rearing, and difficult decisions.
And before our reunion weekend ends, I might even finally
learn who passed out at Louisa May Alcott’s birthplace.
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