Marcus Alden Meredith
October 4, 2025
Reunions (Part 2)“Who are these people?”
This will probably end up being a short essay since, as predicted, I hardly knew any of “those” people at the reunion. My friend and I who went are pretty sure after the reunion that we won’t do that again. We had a class with a size around 400 students at the end of Senior Year in 1980. I figure that we maxed out at somewhere around 45 -50 people at best so 10-12% of the entire class. It was made up of mostly the student council from that year as the leaders of the reunion and that I expected. What was disappointing is how many of the people I wanted to see never showed up and, if memory serves me right, have never shown up since high school.
Not unexpectedly, they incessantly talked about children, retirement (that I was down with), and their various physical ailments while making it rather difficult to pay attention to them while not drifting off into some pre-somnambulic reverie that at second thought I should have allowed. Now to be fair, these are nice people… that being said, they are also so utterly mundane that it’s no wonder I only knew them when we were forced to be in the same classes by society and the general confines of public education. Now I am a scientist which means that by modern psychological assessments I lie between being “normal” and “autistic” or “neuroatypical.” I’m not extroverted, nor am I an introvert but more properly termed an otrovert. I can be extroverted but it requires more energy that I usually like to put out, but I can do well with small groups of people that I know and well with bigger groups if I have a purpose to my extroversion like a presentation or a talk about a particular subject. But small talk is a diversion that I find utterly banal. So, I’ll bet you could guess what I was like at the reunion.
I was given a small moment to feel good when one of the old classmates (female and still nice) mentioned that (let’s see if I get this quote correct), “It’s so interesting to see how you just blossomed after high school.” Well, now, first - thank you. Secondly, I should bloody well hope so! I mean it’s a pretty sad and ironic thing to think that for some of you your pinnacle of success socially and relationship wise was in high school! But for some people, their youth was just that… and that’s more than just a bit sad. For me, I have grown to be an utterly different person from the one I was in my teens and 20’s. My skills, talents, and even my physicality have never been stronger than they are now. As a Stoic, it is one of the foundational principles of the philosophy that we regard fitness of the mind and the body as an ongoing process of learning and self-improvement - Mens sana in corpore sano: “Healthy mind, healthy body.” The physical degradation of my classmates by age was… a bit distressing (especially the men, the women seemed to be doing better). If there was something good that came of that it’s a renewed focus on my physical fitness which I was told by my doctor just gets harder as you get older… well, as my mother once said only half jokingly, “Getting old a’int for sissies.”
In the end, the best part of the reunion really had nothing to do with the reunion per se, but the fact that I was able to get together with my oldest friends for the first time in years. “Getting the band back together” was and is always a treat. We’ve known each other for just over 50 years and if Charles and Tom could be found, the full band of The Five would be together for the first time in almost 45 years. Sadly, none of us have been able to track down Tom for about a decade and Charles just seemed to disappear after he got married and his father died. Seeing one of my friends parents was a nice accomplishment but in his late 70’s, the dad is suffering from dementia and memory loss but his mom looks pretty good for 81 and luckily still getting around well.
So, to put a bow in this essay, it’s not always “une bonne chose” to be looking back to often and that I don’t intend to do. Personal history is different from the scholarly study of history since one is lived experience and the other is more an intellectual exercise. If I’m able, I hope to put the two into a context that makes what’s left of MY life filled with both. Adieu.
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