Sandy Springs: Class reunions are now in my past

While man has yet to crack the code of time travel, our enchantment with days past has not waned. The celluloid ovation to the ’50s, “Grease,” was the top-grossing film of 1978. Mention “Woodstock” and some get wistful, evincing the three-day event was about more than music and drugs — it “defined a generation.”

On a more parochial level we indulge our proclivity with our past by organizing reunions, whether it’s with peers from high school, college, the military — the list is endless. If we can’t go back in time, we’ll bring time back to us — sorta, kinda, maybe.

If high school was one of the great times in your life, the reunion is a splendid invention. One is encouraged to rekindle memories that have been reduced to embers by the passing years. Who would pass on one more night to be BMOC or the homecoming queen — complete with mixed nuts and a cash bar.

If you weren’t high school royalty, and the experience was a miserable blur of Clearasil, trips to the orthodontist and dateless Friday nights at home, the reunion can be like a Civil War re-enactment where one is reminded of past insuccesses.

At my 10th reunion — I’m Riverwood, class of 1974 — we seemed to be anxious to look like we’d been doing something of substance for that first decade out of high school. At No. 20 we seemed to be trying to get something substantive accomplished before we hit 40. But when reunion 3-0 hit we were much more relaxed, just happy not to have yet hit 50.

As events progressed most were a little heavier and creased with a few more lines around the eyes. But idle flattery, or failing eyesight, produced the ubiquitous suggestio falsi: “You haven’t changed a bit.”

Labor Day weekend this year, alumni of North Springs and Riverwood high schools will gather for a “mega” reunion, inviting all those from classes 1966 to 1979.