Overheard at a baby boomer’s 45th high school reunion

hippies-441707_640I recently attended—and helped to organize—my (gulp!) 45th high school reunion. When you get a bunch of 63-year-olds in a room with a bar and background music from the sixties and seventies, you know you’re going to hear some interesting comments. Here’s a sampling:

“Oh hell, I wrote too big on the sign-in sheet because I forgot my glasses and can’t read it.”

“I don’t mind that he spilled beer on my leg because he got on his knees and wiped it off me,” said a woman about a classmate who’d been a high school heartthrob.

“Hi, I’ve seen you in bed,” someone said to Hubs upon meeting him for the first time, referring to a photo that accompanied a previous post about how hearing loss can affect your sex life.

“I gave my mom a tablet today,” said a classmate, referring to a computer, not medication.

“Technology’s great—I was in the waiting room for glaucoma surgery and there was an 80-year-old there using Siri.”

Looking at a photo of our class’s yearbook committee artfully posed outdoors, one member of the committee who wasn’t pictured said, “You think the yearbook staff was stoned? Yes, we were—that’s why I fell off the rock and wasn’t in the picture.”

“You chose to be Catholic? There’s nothing wrong with being Catholic, but I just don’t understand why you’d choose to be one.”

Female: “My feet are killing me; I’m not used to wearing high heels.”
Male: “Me either.”

“If you don’t keep in touch, I’m going to hunt you down and torch your underwear.”

Referring to a now-married classmate: “He dated a million women.”

Referring to husband-and-wife teachers in high school: “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, both of them are teachers and together they make $20K!’ That seemed like so much money back then.”

“She doesn’t know what a happy pill is—she doesn’t need it.”

Male: “How do I know you from high school?”
Female: “We had a moment during freshman year.”

Upon reintroducing himself to a classmate, the classmate said, “Oh, you were one of the smart kids—I was a dumb f*ck.”

“My ex-husband has an unlikable new girlfriend with the same name as my daughter, so my daughter decided to nickname the girlfriend ‘Vaginitis.’ When the girlfriend calls my daughter, that’s what comes up on caller ID on her cell phone.”

“Can we turn down the music? It’s hard to talk.”

“I work with a bunch of lovely men, but when we women started talking about periods in the lunchroom, they stuck their fingers in their ears and went ‘la-la-la’ and headed for the doors.”

Said one classmate to another who’d posted a video on Facebook of himself lip-synching Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” while driving his rental car from the airport: “Isn’t it kind of ironic that you’re singing that behind the wheel of a Lincoln Town Car?”

“What do you expect from a bunch of middle-aged hippies?”

Classmate #1: “You haven’t changed a bit!”
Classmate #2: “Bullshit.”

And probably the most often-heard utterance was, “Can you believe it’s been 45 years?”

There were poignant moments, too, as we remembered the more than 30 classmates who are no longer alive, learned of those among us who’d battled serious illness, and empathized with those dealing with aging parents or who have lost them altogether. At this age, many more of us are “orphans” than not.

But overall, there was simply a pervasive sense of goodwill. Appreciation for one another’s achievements. Happiness for those in long marriages, or who have found new love later in life. Gratitude for having made it this far. And laughter—lots of laughter.

High school reunions
test our memory, eyesight
and sense of humor.

What about you? Do you have some high school reunion memories you’d like to share?

For more of my humor, go here.

 

Share this Post:

8 thoughts on “Overheard at a baby boomer’s 45th high school reunion”

  1. Having just gone to a retrospective of the 60’s, your reunion hit home! So glad you got to laugh again with your high school friends and acquaintances.. like I always say,”in some ways, high school never ends!”

  2. My two high schools (I switched in senior year) had 50 year reunions last year. I couldn’t/didn’t go, but I did receive the book and the large photograph that were put together by fellow alums of the school I attended for three years. I was one of the class outcasts as a teenager, so my memories are filled with hurt as well as some nostalgia. It was great, though, to reconnect with the classmates I was friendly with back then, and sad to hear that one of them had passed away and another was now very sick and living in a home.

    Thank you for posting this.

  3. You have good (over)hearing and good memory for a sexagenarian. I enjoyed this, Roxanne.

    1. Thanks, Bill! I had to write things down as I heard ’em (or else between the wine and my less-than-steel-trap memory, I never would have recalled what some classmates said).

Comments are closed.