Every winter, the pale-bellied brant goose flies from the Canadian Arctic all the way to the British Isles, only to return in the spring. Every five years, salmon in the Atlantic Ocean fight their way up upstream back to the tributaries where they were born. And every 10 years, the graduates of East Lansing High School travel back to an agreed-upon sports bar to eat artichoke dip and ask each other, “How have you been? What are you doing now?”
Why do we do it? Why do we go to our high school reunions? It’s not as though most of the faces behind the name tags — slightly rounder, slightly grayer — had crossed our minds over the past decade. Yet, at the appointed time, like wildebeest streaming across the savannah, we heed reunion committee czar Biza Repko’s call to return.
Comments
Nice column today. It is our questioning nature and curiosity that makes us human. "Whatever happened to Mike the class clown?" It gives meaning to what a lifetime signifies.
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Never been to any of my high school or college reunions. It always seemed pretty pointless to me. It's not too far away for me to attend, it's a two hour drive to my home town and only an hour to my college. I've never been interested in alumni activities either. I suppose I just don't understand why other people idenitfy so strongly to the schools they attended,
I guess it depends in part on where you went to college. If you had a college where there was a strong sense of community and friendship, as there was for me, you would be more likely to want to go to the reunions and donate to the college, too.
There are people from my college that I spent my entire lifetime wondering about and they don't come to the reunions, either. But there are others who were my friends, or at least nice people not in my circle, and I am so happy to see them and chat with them.
What a nice article. Funny how life evens out all the different groups.
This article is truly a "keeper:" It is so well written and thoughtful that you want to share it with the students you were fortunate to meet while attending school from grade I to graduate school. Students who became life long friends: No bullying in those days . . . boys fighting - rare, and certainly no guns because only the dads went hunting during 'season' for deer, moose, or ducks. Too bad the students of today are so plugged into the social media technology that they are missing the human connectiveness of community.
Who the devil cares about this self-promoted, nothing-else-to-write-about screed that is also out of season? The Blob really does need to crack down on its columnists, especially the ones it will not identify as being errant and thus suspendable for a week or two.
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Wow, no mention in any editorials of 911. Why?
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