I have attended one high school reunion in my life. It was, to say the least, painful. It was the fifth high school reunion, when we were all busy puffing ourselves out, trying to prove to each other that five years out of high school/a year out of college we were all already big successes. I was as bad as the rest of them, trying to prove my worth as much to me as to any of them. When I described my job as a paralegal (something I'd only been doing for perhaps six months)to an old high school acquaitance he commented with something like,"Oh, you're a secretary." That stung on several levels, partly because it was somewhat true (during my training period there was a lot of paperwork and go-fer-ing for the Bossman) and partly because it was a comment from someone I had been friends with that was designed to discretely draw blood. At that point I vowed I was never doing another reunion.
Two years ago I joined Classmates.com in an effort to try and track down the idiot kid who hit my car and turned out to have bogus insurance. Classmates.com turns out to be a minimally useful website where you have to pay in order to use most of their offerings. I'd quite forgotten I was even listed there until a friend from high school days tripped over my entry and sent me an email last month asking if I were going to the reunion. I hadn't planned on it, but my antipathy from thirty years ago had subsided somewhat and I realized I really wouldn't mind reconnecting with some of my former friends. In order to avoid a lie-by-omission, I also have to confess that it occurred to me that this might be a way to network and maybe scout out some job possibilities. My high school graduating class had over one thousand people in it, and if even only a tenth of them showed up I still had good odds of getting some job leads.
So I signed up for the reunion. And then a week ago I got notice that the reunion was cancelled due to lack of interest. Out of our class of over 1000, only fifteen people had signed up for the reunion. Go figure. Guess I wasn't the only one who'd had a dismal time at past reunions.
My friend who originally contacted me still wanted to get in touch. She also knew of some other people who'd be in the area for the Thanksgiving holiday who were disappointed by the cancellation. One thing led to another, and we decided we'd host a small "Alternate Reunion" so that we could still catch up with each other. Dinner at a restaurant, with anyone who still wanted to chat invited over to my place for after dinner conversation.
Yesterday I made reservations at a local restaurant for next Saturday evening for fifteen people, figuring that we'd get no more than those originally interested in the reunion. Within hours of setting this up I had eleven responses, half of whom were people who hadn't signed up for the original reunion. Confirmations are still coming in.
We didn't restrict the size of this thing because we didn't think anyone outside the original group of people who said yes to the reunion would be interested. I fear now that I'm going to end up with a bigger crowd than anticipated, with the potential of all of them coming to the condo after dinner. This is way more than I was planning on.
I have not hosted a "party" or "event" for people not immediate family in my entire adult life. I have no idea what to serve after dinner, what anyone drinks, what to do with the cats (who will either freak, escape, or both), what music to play (I've a feeling my peculiar collection of CD's isn't going to work well and borrowing from The Prof's heavy metal collection isn't going to help). Consider me overwhelmed.
And yet, in a very weird, twisted way, I'm looking forward to this.