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Reunion
The class I would have graduated with is having a reunion this weekend. There’s a small item about it in the paper, which my father’s wife has helpfully drawn a box around. “You should go,” she says, handing it to me, “Your old friends would be happy to see you.”
My old friends whom I haven’t seen or talked to since tenth grade I’m thinking, and like I need something else to do this weekend besides sort through my Dad’s already picked-over stuff before she throws it out. But after more hours alone in the house with her than I can stick, I decide to go anyway, on Saturday when the paper said the class would gather on Main Street in front of the old courthouse to watch the homecoming parade. Everything in this town has to happen on the same weekend, otherwise no one would ever come back. Unless, of course, you never left, which I expect might be the case for most of the reunioners.
I figure I can walk casually along the other side of the street, blending into the spectators, and scope out the gathering incognito to determine whether it’s worth going through all that — there’s only a couple of people I have any curiosity about anyway. This way it will be easy to just keep on walking if it looks like the gathering would be a huge downer. So that’s the plan, I’m moseying along Main Street, not able to recognize a single face on the other side, and about to decide I’ll bypass the whole thing. Then a voice…
