Making Things Right at School Reunions

Class reunions can be nail-biting experiences. Apparently the 50th high school reunion is a time for making amends. At mine, as soon as dinner was over, a woman walked up to me.

“Hi. Do you remember the time you sat down after the Pledge of Allegiance in the first grade and you crashed to the floor instead of finding your chair?”

“Yes,” I said. “It still hurts,” I lied.

“Well, I pulled the chair out from under you.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said and left.

I guess that was an apology, though she didn’t say so.
We didn’t stay long afterward because my wife didn’t know anybody. A few days later, I got a phone message from probably the most popular guy in high school. I was puzzled because I barely knew him at all and didn’t mix in his circle.

I called him back. “I want to apologize for beating up on you in the 12th grade,” he said. Huh? I barely remembered. Well, yes, he and another guy in physics class bet each other on whether they could make this shy, reserved student mad.

While the teacher wasn’t looking, they slapped me on the back of the head. The guy who bet on making me mad won. Of course, the teacher raised hell. But I soon forgot about it, writing it off as a prank by stupid kids, which it was.

For apologizing, I guess Mr. Popular felt better about himself, but I didn’t really like it. I didn’t recall being a victim of bullying in school but now felt like one.

Then came my 50th college reunion at the University of California at Berkeley, an enormous university, which was a great place to learn about journalism in the 1960s but not that good for making friends. I knew no one at the quite small reunion. Not a soul!

Then I compared high schools with one stranger. When I told him I went to El Cerrito High, he said, “Oh, so did my wife. I’ll have you talk to her.” She walked up and I didn’t recognize her, but she told me her name. Amazed, I said, “Wow. I took you to the senior prom!”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “I went with the man who is now my husband.”

“Yes, you did,” I insisted. “How could I forget that!”
Then she said, “Oh, that must have been in my junior year. I went with my husband in my senior year.”

Her husband had been listening. Suddenly, the two left and had a heated conversation away from the crowd. Were they already a couple when I dated her?

He was furious because she never told him about me. I was steaming because she didn’t even remember me.

I skipped the next reunion.