D6

Brent Mazerolle
Modern life

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Reunited and it feels so good. Reunited 'cause we understood . . . that even without Peaches and Herb singing, our high school reunion might be fun.

Not that we understood that immediately, of course.

My wife and I, members of Moncton High School's Class of 1984, really weren't too sure we even wanted to go to our 25th high school reunion. First, it overlapped a bit with a family wedding, the first wedding we had been invited to in seven years, yet another example of how you can sit home most every other Saturday night only to find yourself double-booked some nights.

Second, did we really want to get together with a bunch of other geezers to reminisce about what we once were? Neither Tracy nor I think much of what we were in high school, but at the last possible moment, we decided we'd wake up the next morning kicking ourselves if we didn't check out such a rare opportunity.

So we took the plunge, making the long and trepidatious (trepidatious?) journey to the Moncton Golf and Country Club, a half dozen blocks from home.

I can now recommend that all of you go to whatever reunion you find yourselves invited to, even if, like me, you find yourself pretty much the only old geezery looking one among a bunch of folks for whom the years have been remarkably kind. My gosh, what a good looking bunch the Class of '84 is, if I do say so myself.

Forty-something really is the new thirty-something. We wore badges with our yearbook photos on them, and the contrasts were remarkable. As I've long known, my beloved wife is one of the greatest advertisements for contact lenses I've ever seen, but as much as I lament a quarter century of hair loss and waist widening, I sure don't miss my zits.

What really mattered of course, wrong as it is, was seeing how everybody else looked. But it was also fascinating to find out what everybody had become. We've become a lot of things. Moms and dads and at least one granddad that I heard of and doctors and dentists and lawyers and realtors and civil servants, soldiers, scientists and CEOs, cops and teachers and, yes, hovering near the bar, two or three media types, including me.

Suddenly, as grown-ups, people clicked instead of cliqued. If there is one compensation of getting older, it is surely this: the confidence to be who you are and not worry about whether other people approve. The other thing you learn, as elusive as it was in high school, is that people from different backgrounds might have something to contribute, if not to the world, then to at least a few minutes of good conversation.

High school. Why do these three years matter so much, especially since at the time many of us were at our most savage and horrible?

Someone said it seemed more like a family reunion than what it was. My first reaction was to reject that notion as just a bit too sentimental, but now I'm thinking that was pretty perceptive.

For that trio of years, your peers are your family, and all that entails. High school may in fact be the ultimate dysfunctional family, with all the same passions and emotions, love and lust and angst and anger.

There were awkward moments at the reunion too, of course -- ex-boyfriends and girlfriends to see again, and new spouses to meet. I had particular sympathy for one of my oldest friends, who was confronted at one point with the spectacle of his ex-wife and his current wife across the room chatting and laughing together.

Definitely a conversation you wouldn't want to be part of, yet one you'd definitely want to be a fly on the wall for, I'd think.

I also had sympathy for some of the spouses who came along. It can't be easy riding shotgun when your husband or wife is taking a breakneck tear down Memory Lane.

I was about to buy one lovely fellow and new friend a good stiff drink to help make him feel welcome when it became clear he was a minister. A minister of the clergy, not a minister of the crown, you understand. I've yet to meet a cabinet minister who'd turn down a drink.

Like every other social gathering, suddenly it was over and I realized I'd missed the chance to catch up with a whole bunch of people who I'd seen across the room and never got to.

As a longtime columnist in this space, I was pretty well expected by some at the party to be writing about this today, and though I hate to be predictable, this was too good to resist.

I just hope it's not another 25 years before I write another reunion column.

n Brent Mazerolle is a Times & Transcript staff reporter. He used to be someone else. His column appears here every Friday.