Another Skipped Reunion

 So my FaceBook pages are abuzz with anticipation of this weekend's MacArthur High School 45th Reunion. Like all reunions except for our 10th and 20th, I shall be a non attendee.

I really enjoyed the 10th, in 1989. I have moved to Miami from LI the day after graduation, and hadn't been back to NY often, and it was nice to see all the old friends -- and the transition from kids to young adults. Wifey skipped -- D1 was a baby of 1 year -- but it was fun seeing how everyone was making out in life. I ran into my old friend Eric, and we hugged after learning that my Dad and his Mom had died years before.

For the 20th, we decided to make a weekend out of it with Joelle and Kenny. Joelle found a nice inn in the Hamptons, and we enjoyed the time there before going to the crappy corporate place in, I think, Melville where the reunion was held. This time, I sort of wished I had skipped -- as I realized that there was a reason that I kept in touch with some people and NOT with others for a reason.

There was a funny moment, though. I answered a knock on our door (Wifey was napping) and an old neighbor I'll call Leigh, since that's her name, sort of stumbled in, already pretty wasted at 5 pm, confessing to me she always had a crush on me since childhood and hoping I would be attending. I pointed to a waking up Wifey, and she introduced herself, and sort of slinked away. It would have been a better story if Leigh were a smoke show, to use the millennial term, but she was a frumpy, newly divorced Atlanta housewife.

Anyway, I decided to skip future events, but at the 40th, Kenny asked if I would attend again. This time, the plan would be to stay in the City, let Wifey and Joelle see a Broadway show while we made our way to dreary Central Nassau to catch up. I never turn down a Kenny request, and we made preliminary plans. But Fate stepped in -- our good friend Jeannette's daughter Samantha invited us to her wedding at a farm venue in Homestead, and that event clearly trumped, pardon the expression, the reunion.

For this one, I had an excuse, sort of -- another friend's wedding, in LA. It was the prior weekend, but close enough, and so I begged off. As it turns out, we planned a DIFFERENT nostalgic event -- the 30th anniversary of our law firm -- to be held tomorrow night. I look MOST forward to that, and seeing the news of the Levittowners on FaceBook (tm) is plenty for me.

Kenny and my friend Michael, a microbiologist living in Tampa, posted a picture of himself standing in front of the ugly red brick building -- the weather appears unseasonably warm. I'm happy for all the attendees -- this time it's being held at a pub called Mulcahy's -- a place we used to attend back in the 70s -- hard next to the LIRR tracks at the Wantagh station. The sub reunion event is a trip to venerable Chinese place Kwong Ming -- which indeed had egg rolls like no other place any of us ever visited. Probably the nostalgia they put in along with the minced pork did the trick.

So I wish the Generals and Lady Generals (remember -- it's a school named after Douglas MacArthur) a wonderful time.

Kenny and I met for dinner last night -- at gorgeous Glass and Vine in Peacock Park in the Grove. The food was delicious, and the setting gorgeous. Yeah -- I'll take Miami over Long Island any day of the week.

I think of our class of 455, probably 50 or so are no longer with us. As Kenny reminds -- simply check the mortality tables -- the subsequent reunions will have fewer and fewer potential attendees. I guess the 50th will have photos of walkers and wheelchairs. Oh Lord, as D1 likes to say.