Stories indexed with the term ‘nostalgia’

I know a lot of people who look forward to their high school reunions, others who dread them, and still others who avoid them like the plague. My brother falls squarely in the third category. “If I was that eager to see you,” he says, “why would I have waited five years?”

Now that we have Facebook, we already know who’s gained weight and who’s gone bald, so what else do we really need to see? Maybe that’s why attendance for reunions nationwide has dropped dramatically.

As for me, I like reunions. Yes, high school was often traumatic – a time when I could actually think everybody really was focused on my bad hair day, because what else could possibly be more important than scrutinizing my many flaws? But on the whole, I liked high school. I liked most of my classes at Huron High, from Homebuilding to Humanities. I had great teachers, and I made lifelong friends.

But a high school reunion can test all those memories, and throw us back into the same traumatized state we fell into the first time. One friend, who was a tough, popular guy in high school, has skipped all our reunions, he told me, out of fear. Despite my peer pressure, he did not show up for this one, either. [Full Story]