When reunions go wrong
I attended a reunion last night, and it was perhaps the most pathetic reunion you could possibly imagine.
It all started a few weeks back when my friend Peter was over for dinner. Pete has been living in the UK for a while, but came back to New Zealand for his brother's butterfly-themed wedding, which, by the way, involved a costume and scene change halfway through the ceremony (metamorphosis you see!) along with a number of performances by the bride and groom - both theatrical and musical - but that's a whole other blog entry (and unfortunately not mine as I only heard about it in a colourful retelling of events).
Where was I? Ah yes, Pete was over for dinner and as we reminisced about the good old days at university we realised it has been 10 years since our tight-knit group of radio majors had all been together at the same time.
Given that Peter was only here for a short time and that Kate M, another of the group who also resides in London, was also heading back to New Zealand, we figured the timing couldn't be better to rally the troops for a reunion knees-up.
Pete and I were excited. Because there were only 15 of us in our radio major back in 2000 and it was quite an intense year, we all grew very close while we tried desperately to avoid melting down under the pressure of our final year of study.
We started a radio station together, helped with each other's assignments, slept over in the studio in order to maximise our access to the only computer that had a radio-editing program on it, and then there was that legendary trip to Waiheke...
Our tutors were relaxed and friendly, and every day in the classroom was a social event. Outside university we were all best mates too; our social lives revolved around each other. Despite having different interests and personalities, we definitely became a very close group.
Then we were ejected into the real world and we all went our separate ways.
So back to this reunion thing. Between us, Peter and I still have contact details for most of the group, so we started a Facebook event and let everyone know the what, where and whens. Those who aren't on Facey we contacted by email or phone. Then it was just a case of waiting for the excited OMG-I-CAN'T-WAITs to roll in.
They didn't roll in. Quite the opposite, in fact. We received a few sorry-I-can't-make-its, and from the rest - total radio silence (excuse the pun).
In the end, last night, it was just Peter, Kate M and myself who turned up to the central Auckland pub for this exciting group reunion. Seeing as Pete and I had recently caught up and he still sees Kate a lot in London, it was really just a reunion between me and Kate. Still very nice (don't get me wrong Kate, it was awesome to catch up with you), but not quite the party we had planned.
We laughed about the ridiculous situation, we exchanged theories on what the others in our group might be up to these days, and we aired our combined paranoia that perhaps reunion attendance sucked because the rest of the group just didn't want to see us.
To be honest, I was disappointed. Those heady days at university are high up on my list of good times in my life, and I really would have liked to catch up with everyone in a pathetic and desperate attempt to recapture the good old days. I guess I'll just have to go over my old essays to relive the fun instead.
How much contact do you have with friends from school, university, or even old jobs? Have you ever been to a reunion (successful or otherwise)? I'd like to hear your stories.
Also, any plans to hang out with Meat Loaf next week? No, that's just me then?
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Jesus...Jane you poor bugger. That's got to be one of my biggest phobia's ever. How many live in Auckland? Bastards...ha ha ha.
I'm afraid this is going to rankle for a while...it's human nature.
oh no! It's this sort of story that lets me justify my crippling fear of social rejection and subsequent lack of party/get together planning.
I am bad at keeping intouch with people, thank goodness for facebook! I have been to some uni nursing reunions organised on FB, always a good time.
Hanging with Meat Loaf would be cool and really interesting I would imagine.
Love it or hate it - I think Facebook has been the best thing ever for catching up with old school buddies. I've made contact with so many old friends that I would probably never have seen or talked to ever again. We haven't had a big reunion or anything but I've met up with a few if we happened to be crossing paths for whatever reason.
One of my ex girlfriends from school noticed on my status one day that I was heading to the BDO, she was going as well, so we ended up meeting there and hanging out for the day. All thanks to FB! (she's married with 2 children now so no shenanigans haha)
I went to a reunion of my primary school class a while back - we had all turned or were abotu to turn 50...and this was jsut my class....so not the whole school.
Many of them I had gone to Highschool with too.....
And while it was interesting it wasn't really "fun" - my memories were quite different from theirs, my "best friend" (x 2) had made better friends after we drifted apart & didn't hold our time together in much regard - ie they'd forgotten much of it.....
Years and years ago I went to a highschool reunion where there was only 1 other person from my class....and we had even less in common.....
I don't think I'll bother any more.....
I just went to a reunion in Thailand to celebrate our 30th bdays. A collection of friends from London, Australia and NZ all met up over there for a 2 week party holiday. we had planned the trip over 2 yrs ago and everyone turned up including a few friends of friends. It was awesome! We are planning another one in 5 yrs time in Mexico!
I once dreamed that I went to a blog reunion, but even in the dream the hot blogger-chick slapped me for posting inappropriate comments, lol ;-) I'm hopeless with names and faces. I'm one of those annoying (albeit common) people who goes to parties and forgets each person's name even before they've finished introducing themselves. So, I have to remember people by referencing their characteristics... At various reunions, I have met (most of these are true examples): the quiet Christian girl who went on to work as a stripper, the high school jock who now wears a keg where his six-pack used to be, the school partygirl who now has 4 kids to 7 different fathers, the school man-whore who now owes child support for 3 children and denies he's the father for another 2, the goth chick who is now an accountant, the jerk who continues to treat women like s**t (and, as a result, has more sex with more women than everyone else combined), the ultra-Conservative teachers' pet who went on to become a pot-smoking love-guru living on a commune, the nerd who suddenly looks gorgeous to all the single women, the drug-dealer who is now a police officer and the former co-worker who I thought I'd executed for losing track of the Millennium Falcon during a game of inter-galactic tag ;-)
What I most about that sort of thing is non-commital. When people say "I think I can make it", or facebook "May be attending", and then don't confirm that they aren't.
Then you end up with the small group who did commit and you end up getting all grumpy. If the others had just outright said "No" then you could have thought of something more appropriate for a smaller group.
And I'm always nervous going to reuniony things because I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to talk about.
Definitely prefer to leave my past friendships in the past so probably would've turned down the offer too. I figure we lost touch for a reason so no point trying to force it 'n stuff. Plus sometimes you don't wanna know what happened to them. I found out later in life that one of our school's worst bullies had become very successful & had a great life. With all the misery he inflicted on so many of us during our school years, I had always fantasized that he ended up a destitute, miserable, lonely old drunk with erection problems & that fantasy was completely ruined!
I barely ever see anyone from school, only those who were very close friends through both primary and secondary, I still live in the same city I went to Uni in and the majority of the friends I made there are still here, it's just the situation has changed, mortgage, rugrats, the old two point five. Life has deemed we just don't have the time to drag a couch onto the roof to wrap ourselves in blankets against the Wellington S'ourWester, drink cheap vodka and brown eye commuters in the street.
....heh.....Meatloaf.
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Hey Jane, i know how you feel, i went back to Canada last year to have a holiday with my canadian Family, i asked my little bro to sort me out a huge bash with all my friends some of which i had not heard from in 10 years. 1 turned up... stink i know, there were like 20 yes's on Facebook and a few no cus people lived in other provinces and were over seas. heres a HUGE HUG and a cheeky kiss from me to you. i feel for ya girl, can be a bit depressing eh. here's look to how freaking awesome you are now! B