The Reunion

Subject: Newton – Reunion

Thursday Oct 5  … Cambridge – Newton

I knew that I had arrived in New England when I hit my first rotary.  For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, the rotary is a quaint New England device where you manage traffic not with stop signs or stop lights, but rather by putting a statue in the middle of the intersection and letting everyone blast around the statue in a counter-clockwise direction until they are able to get off.  So, for instance, to go straight, you must first filter into the stream of maniacs already in the rotary coming at you from the left, then as soon as you’ve done that, it’s “eyes right!”, to pick you way through the lunatics coming at you from the road on your right so you may escape the rotary to continue straight on down the road.  

They are a pure Darwinian test of wills and strategy, and I love ’em!  In a truck in the rain it wasn’t quite as much fun as it used to be in my old Toyota Corona, but I think I was still able to represent — that is, to project that air of crazed indifference that all Boston drivers cultivate.

I surprised myself by making it all the way to the Charles Hotel parking garage without getting lost or turned around or even making a wrong turn.  Then it was time to do the Reunion thing.

Just to make sure everybody is up to date on what’s going on, the half the reason for the trip was to see family and old friends, but the other half of the nominal reason for taking this trip was to go to my 30th Harvard College Reunion.  

Yes, I know, sometimes it doesn’t seem to me like I could have gone to Harvard either, but they admitted me and I went, so there you have it!

I’ve always been kind of a sucker for reunions.  I attended I think years 5, 10, 20, and 25, as well as maybe three high school reunions.  Objectively speaking, I would say that a person who has gone to that many reunions needs to get a life, but hey, I like catching up with people!

I like catching up, then leaving them and going back to my life, which makes reunions perfect for me. 🙂

Registration was the usual ritual — declare your name at a desk manned by cheerful Harvard 2002-ish students. They find a packet containing your name tag (so you can walk around campus labeled as a complete dork), event tickets, various lists, maps, and schedules as well as whatever booty the organizers could scrape up to toss in.  The booty comprised a carrying bag suitable for lugging a laptop around, and a baseball hat.  Both are reasonable booty items. The hat has “HR 70” stitched in crimson thread on it, which is pretty sweet. (I wish I could find that hat!)

There was a list of all the attendees, and it was a pretty disappointing list from my p.o.v.  There were only a few people I know. Of those, some I actually like, but none that would classify as a close friend or even that I would have more than ten minutes worth of catching up with to do.

So I hung around and drank a couple of their expensive free beers and ate a sandwich and greeted the four people I recognized and trundled myself off to Newton to find my friend Dave’s apartment.

Dave is also Harvard ’70, and is obviously smarter than me since he did not fork over the $$ to register for the Reunion.  His clever plan was to wait for my report to see if it was worth doing.  My report and the quality of folks on the sign-up list confirmed him in his plan to continue his regularly scheduled life without the Reunion.

Friday, Reunion Day

I had thought that the $240 check I had mailed in bought me the whole reunion, but au contraire, it bought me only the first day and a half! (hence my crack about the expensive free beers)  For a mere $130 more I could get an additional lunch, dinner, and goodbye Sunday brunch, but given my lack of excitement about what I ahd seen of the reunion product so far, I decided to just say no.  So today and tonight IS my reunion.

True to the navel-gazing aspect of these events, there was an afternoon seminar where we all got together to talk about … us!  I recreated my college days by coming in late and reading the materials instead of paying attention to what was going on. 

Later I realized that this was where I blew my best chance to “engage” the event instead of skulking around the edge:  I mean here are all these successful and important people spilling their guts, whining about not having relaxed enough in their lives, not enjoying the moment, not having any clue what they’ll do when they don’t do their jobs anymore (i.e. retire).  And here I am with stuff to say on these issues that would probably be interesting to my more tightly wired colleagues.  I could have introduced myself to all as the guy who blew off his job for six weeks to drive there, and would have no doubt had a more interesting reunion for it.  Oh well…

Afterwards there was time to wander Harvard Square and see what stores have gone out of business or opened since I lived here.

Then I walked the mile or so across the Charles River to my beautiful truck in the Biz School parking lot to change into my “business casual” attire, as mandated in the program for tonight’s gala event.  I took that to mean wear a tie.  The last time I wore a tie was last Halloween, but I had packed a dress shirt and tie cross-country for just this event!

The gala event is at the Boston Aquarium, which turned out to be a great choice for me.   I could watch the interesting fishies and penguins and toads and squids when I ran out of desire to talk to fellow Harvies.

Saturday and Sunday — chillin’ in Newton

Dave’s daughter was in a soccer tournament this weekend, and it rurns out that her team is the terror of the eleven-year-old set, which meant they won all their games, which meant Dave was gone all day Saturday and Sunday.  Which meant that I had a delightful time hanging out: fiddling on Dave’s internet connection and taking walks around Newton, and generally recharging the ole batteries.

Unless I have another bad attack of FMS (Fear of Missing Something), this might be the last reunion for me.  The people showing up have devolved into a hardy group of reunion regulars, most of whom live in the greater  Boston area, and who seem to know each other pretty well.

Everyone was nice. Everyone was pretty pleased with themselves.  The folks who feel good about their lives are just the ones that would show up!  Those who are depressed or poor or not feeling good or are just plain pissed off aren’t likely to show up at a reunion to tell everyone about it. So this is kind of a bland festival of mutual admiration.