The "Other" Class of 1968

I graduated high school in 1968. In 1973, which should have been our five year reunion, none of the class officers organized anything, so we non-leaders took over. We reserved a room, invited everyone we had kept in touch with to a meeting, talked up a reunion, passed a hat and off we went. We ended up having a six year reunion – unusual, but some of us didn’t want to wait until the ten year mark for a party. After that, the reunions came on every five year mark and I co-chaired for about 15 years, then gradually stopped going. My co-chair was a wonderfully social and keep-in-touch type of person. I’m fairly anti-social – I like people, but from a distance. Unfortunately, she didn’t know everyone in our class of around 600, and after a while, it was the same people over and over – usually the high school popular crowd, of which my co-chair was a member. If other, non “in crowd” kids showed up, they were welcomed, but no one really knew them and many eventually stopped coming. Nobody’s fault.
Last year, another member of our class decided we needed a party to celebrate “The Year of Turning 60”, which was an event that happened to most of us this year. He was one of the brainier kids in school and started this movement on Facebook and eventually got quite a group of people fired up about the party. There were some smart kids, some band geeks, GAA girls, Drill Teamers, athletes and nice kids who just showed up to high school, had a few friends, but were not necessarily leaders or well known outside of their immediate circle. Many of them hadn’t attended a reunion recently and the opportunity to talk amongst themselves on Facebook, reconnect and get excited about a party was a great catalyst. Even if you didn’t know someone in high school, you still have that experience in common and it makes for a connection. They had a great party in August and had about the same number of people attend as attended the “official” reunions, but with just a few “crossovers”. My former co-chairman was one of the crossovers and she told me that when she went in, she realized she hardly knew anyone! They had attended our high school at the same time as her but most of them were strangers to her because she hadn’t known them in high school. This was the “Other” Class of 1968.
I’m sure there are even more “other” Classes of 1968 out there and if they feel the need to re-connect, I hope they become involved in whatever social network they feel comfortable using. We went to school with so many interesting people and for whatever reason, we didn’t get a chance to know them. This is another chance to get acquainted. You might meet your new best friend. And you might be like me; glad to see who’s out there and what they’re doing, saying hello and then retreating back into my shell.