Hugs and Handshakes: The Class With Class Is Back For A Weekend
For the Elmira Southside High School Class of 1982 alumni
I set out for the Webb Mills firehouse after picking up bagels as Kountry Krullers. Only Carrie was there when I arrived. It was clear that Carrie’s plans for breakfast weren’t heard or heeded by anyone.
She replied that she was too hungover for a bagel when I offered. She’d only had two or three hours of sleep after closing the bar, rolling Jackie home, and going skinny dipping at her niece’s place. She was moving pretty well for someone our age being that hungover.
I left with my bagels and went back to spend more time with my sister. Mine was a short night, but not as short as Carrie’s. Most of us old coots need a little more rest.
It’s our fortieth class reunion. Last night proved that we’ve aged well, and some of us still have the will to party all night. That said, it was way past our bedtime for the majority of us.
Anticipation
I’d been looking forward to the next reunion since the last one ten years ago. Though I return to Elmira often for family visits and business meetings, I rarely have time to socialize outside the family. I don’t socialize much anyway.
My wife is not a trivial person and, therefore, has no interest in things like class reunions. She has no qualms about me attending mine, preferring not to herself since she wouldn’t know my old classmates. Her class hasn’t had one after their fifth year out of school anyway.
You might think that after returning from a vacation overseas for the first time in my life, a 2-hour trip to my hometown three days later would be more nuisance than a pleasure. Who would think my anxiety between returning from England and leaving for Elmira would far exceed that before our trip to see our son? Especially given the current issues with traveling worldwide.
When Shawn contacted me Thursday saying he was attending, it was as if he had extended a safety net below me and taken a boulder off of my back. Immediately the anxiety subsided, and I was no longer slamming doors, staring into the distance, and vacillating emotionally. I imagine that there may be other classmates that can relate, though we won’t always admit it.
Go Time
Moon roof open, tunes cranked (playlist I titled “Old Folks Reunion”), backpack and accessories loaded. Maybe I’ll grab a bite at Pudgie’s before the bar. I should have plenty of time.
I call Todd when I get to Corning because I can’t answer his text while driving. He’s not coming up but wants me to keep him posted. There are a few people he wants me to say, “Have a good time. What time does it start, six?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to check. I think 8:00 or 9:00”.
I pulled over to check, and Todd’s right, 6:00. No time for Pudgie’s. I ran into my sister’s house not far from Manzari’s Bar & Grill, said hello, and took off again.
Hugs and Handshakes, and “Who Are You Again?”
I walk into the bar and see Adrienne, the last classmate I hugged (except for my best friend Todd when I saw him in 2021). I’d seen her the day before mask mandates and shutdowns began in 2020. She widened those thin but powerful arms for the first of dozens of hugs exchanged through the night and the following day.
I spot faces I recognize (thank God for Facebook), but we all put on name tags. We’re asked not to trade them amongst each other as we did at our 10th reunion. After forty years, even with Facebook, we still need the name tags much more than we did in the past.
Nobody has a back to the door for too long because everyone wants to see who enters next. It’s as if it’s a red carpet ceremony, and each of us is Joan Rivers. It beats watching the Oscars because each celebrity sighting here includes a warm embrace, a handshake, or both for some of us fellas.
You lose count after a while. Any anxiety about who I’ll talk to next fades as the room fills. Unforgotten faces appear younger than they really are, and most frames are bigger, but we still see them as smaller than they are as well. There’s a point where addition and attrition match with those coming and going, and you don’t get to speak to everyone.
A few drinks get some of us loosened up and become more social. A few more drinks, and we’re losing purses, making plans to save the world and get together for breakfast. It’s only at the end of the night that you start to tally who was and wasn’t there and who you hope to catch up with tomorrow.
Saturday
I returned to the firehouse at about 1:20. Pots and Carrie’s significant other, Brian, were on the grill. Carrie and Wendi, the primary organizers for the weekend, had several willing volunteers inside preparing the buffet. A few others had arrived and were chatting. I found Levon and talked with him a bit as folks trickled in.
It was apparent that attendance would be much less than anticipated. Those of us there, about 30 of us, had something special to remember. We are the 10%, the percentage that came, the few people that will place each name (maybe) that was there. We’ll remember the long-squeeze hugs and hearty handshakes and cherish them.
It’s our 40th anniversary of graduation. This time around, we consist of more grandparents and empty-nesters than before. Naturally, there are those we miss who have passed away over time, and we appreciate more than ever before that we’re just happy to be alive.
Someone remarked Friday night about “all of us” returning for the 50th when Mark turned to me and said, “Ain’t no ‘all of us’ coming back in ten years.” So we’ll have this to remember in ten years after the human roulette wheel eliminates a few more of us.
The Saturday group represented Pine City School more than any other school that fed Southside High School. It’s an exclusive, but not private, club. As years go by, it’s increasingly inclusive, accepting everyone who didn’t go to Pine City (I was a PC resident but not in that school zone) as if we’re honorary members.
Unfortunately, not as many cameras were clicking, including mine. We’ll all say we wish we’d taken more photos. Instead, we did what we were there to do. Have fun, communicate in person (what a fucking concept!), and enjoy time with others who have something in common, whether we knew them 40 years ago or not.
I didn’t know Margaret back then but knew who she was, and I think she knew who I was. She was someone then that I’d liked to have known, but we never had classes together or friends close enough to cross paths. What a pleasure it was to finally engage with someone who was simultaneously a new acquaintance and an old friend.
It’s a funny thing about class reunions.
You tend to think, ‘I’d like to see so-and-so, I hope to see yadda yadda.’, but when you arrive, whether or not you find those you hope to see, you end up talking to people you never thought you might talk to. You talk to people you don’t recognize or don’t remember.
That’s why it’s worth going. You find new friends among old ones and may even find new neighbors. Two classmates living some 2000 miles from school found they live five minutes apart.
Some still living locally might say, “I see all my friends anyway,” and bail. My wife has that sentiment regarding her class, and high school reunions are not her thing. Nostalgia isn’t part of her DNA, and I actually admire that in her.
But people like her from my class are missing out, in my opinion. You become a part of a new group of classmates, the 10%–20% who made it to the reunion (or survived it if it was really good). We’d all like to see that percentage rise.
For those that can say, “I always go to my reunions,” that’s great it’s evident you care. You want to see old friends, sure. You might discover you went because, even more than in the past, we’re cheering for and supporting each other, even if it seems to be for only a short time.
There are those that wished they’d been able to come, and a myriad of reasons why they couldn’t. We missed them as much as they missed us. We look forward to the next time when schedules might align for even more of us to join in the festivities. The more the merrier, for sure.
Some folks will not want to look back and have the attitude of “I couldn’t give two shits about it.” I suppose that’s okay because we don’t want your shit. We all have our reasons, and I’m sorry you don’t want to join us.
That brings up another point. The reason why everything went so well with my reunion this weekend was that it was all positive. We held the drama to a minimum and made it a point to remember the good times.
There’s always going to be a detractor or two that don’t like the people on the organizing committee (40-year grudge? C’mon!). Then some are compelled to have the exclusive, invite-only reunion for a particular echelon that attempts to one-up the organized one. The rest find out later when offered leftovers.
Isn’t that sort of like adult bullying? Isn’t it a slap to those who put in so much work for all of us? Maybe some of us haven’t grown out of that yet. (Pardon me for my inclusionary opinions.)
Reality Returns
As I leave Elmira, it’s one of the sadder times in recent memory. An unforgettable weekend is drawing to a close. I stop at the cemetery on the way out to visit a special friend that never made it to our senior year, and can’t hold back the tears for several reasons.
We’ll inevitably return to normalcy from the near utopia we created for a few days. We might try to hold onto the sense of camaraderie; the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of all those familiar faces and voices, the smell in the air when someone’s pleasant (or maybe not) perfume or cologne passes, and all those embraces that were let go too soon. We might wish or even pray that these feelings won’t fade as we return to our comfortable routines, but they will.
I’ll miss everybody I’ve seen over the weekend. Some I’ll never see again. These are special people, individuals with a common uniqueness, in that we are The Elmira Southside High School Class of ’82, The Class With Class. We’re alumni, a word derived from the Latin term meaning “to nourish” and also separately meaning “pupil” and “foster son.”
We learned together. We may not have learned all the same lessons, but we spent our formative years learning together in the same place simultaneously. We hope these reunion memories will last as long as some of the memories of our youth. Alumni are forever; no one can remove that experience from us.
Thanks for reading my story. I’d like to tag some other writers worth reading: MarkfromBoston, Margie Willis, Reece Reid, Michael L Butler, KiKi Walter, Scot Butwell, Scott Younkin, Jameson Steward, Rodrigo S-C, Judy Derby BSc., Adrienne Beaumont, Cliff Hightower, David Perlmutter, David Rudder, David B. Clear, logan coward, Karen Rand Anderson, Lu Skerdoo, Gerald Sturgill
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