Hello...I Must Be Going

The Ds are correct -- I spend entirely too much time on FaceBook. It's a small addiction, I know, but as a frustrated writer, I need the silly outlet, and as a news junkie, it's a source of that information, too -- especially about friends who aren't close enough to see or actually talk to.

My FB has been lit up, so to speak, with talk of our coming 40th high school reunion. It's set to happen this Saturday.

I attended my 10th, in 1989, and really enjoyed it. I hadn't been to Long Island much for the past 10 years, and it was really fun to see kids turning into young adults. I had gone from would be doctor to up and coming lawyer, and was married with a baby girl. I ran into an early childhood friend, Eric, who had become a chemist, and was also married. We talked happily about our school years -- he had stayed, like the majority of my mostly working class peers, at a SUNY school. And then we learned that his mother, and my father, had both died, young. It was a poignant moment -- holy crap -- we WERE grown ups -- we had lost parents.

I looked forward to my 20th, too. By then, my friend Kenny had married, too, and he and his wife and Wifey and I made a fun weekend out of it -- staying in a lovely inn in East Hampton, before driving back to dreary Uniondale for the party. This one had a completely different vibe for me -- I realized that, nearing 40 years old, I no longer cared to spend an evening with someone just because I happened to sit next to them in a high school class 2 decades earlier. I decided it would be my last reunion, and indeed I skipped the 30th.

Well, as the 40th came about, Kenny told me he really wished to go. He's not on Facebook (tm) like I am, and had a greater interest in fellow classmates. I agreed -- D2 and Jonathan were living in the City, and we would make another fun weekend out of it -- leaving our wives in the City, and taking the LIRR out to the party for the night.

We sent in our money ($150 for the party) and set aside the date. But the organizer, Sharon, then made the party her obsession -- pleading each day for people to attend, hectoring all to send in their checks, threatening to cancel the thing if attendance dropped too low. In the end, it seemed that about 10% of our class of 455 agreed to make it.  And as I read the comments of the participants, I recalled that many had that snarky, less than attractive personality native to my working class LI roots. In other words -- not a crowd I particularly looked forward to being among.

And then Fate stepped in. Wifey's very longtime friend Jeannette's daughter Samantha picked the same night to have her wedding. Clearly that event, for a girl I met when she was a day old, and watched become a  young, family lawyer with her own practice, trumped the Reunion.

I messaged Sharon and told her to keep my money -- buy drinks for the other participants -- all the Budweiser they wanted. But no -- she returned the money, and Kenny said he wasn't going either, and got his refund as well.

Kenny looked up our actual graduation date, in June of '79, and in lieu of going to Long Island, had a dinner at a restaurant, in Coral Gables, that was operating in '79 -- Christy's. As we toasted with martinis and Old Fashioned, and ate steak and shrimp cocktail, it occurred to me we had chosen the superior reminiscence method.

And as we are now in the "final week" before the reunion, my FaceBook is totally polluted with entreaties to go - for those still "sitting on the fence." The countdown is absurd to me -- Sharon is making this out to be the most exciting thing in history. It just reinforced my thoughts that I'm glad I had a fine excuse to NOT be on Long Island this weekend.

FaceBook is a nice thing, in that it allows us to satisfy our curiosity about old friends and acquaintances without having to actually be with them. Learning that the obnoxious guy from my science class is now a chiropractor in LA is plenty for me -- I don't have to be with him and be bored learning about his studies on "proprioreception," or some such.

I read the New York Post, so I know plenty about the trials and tribulations of NYC cops and firemen -- I can do without an evening hearing in person about their exploits.  And here in town, I spend plenty of time with lawyers and judges -- some of the participants MOST excited about the reunion are 58 year old spinster-type women now municipal judges in the City. There, too -- I can do without that evening together.

So I wish all the participants of my upcoming 40th reunion a fine time. May they reconnect. May the Jets and Mets start winning -- the Islanders, too.  I'm just happy I'll be in rural Homestead, watching two fine young folks make their long time love affair legal...