Mitch Wagner's Tumblblog

What it was like to attend my 30th high school reunion

I keep in touch with three or four people from high school. And of course after 30 years I’m a very different person from who I was then (fatter and with more hair in my ears). But I still think about high school now and then, and when I do it seems less and less like it actually happened to me, and more like it was a favorite book or TV show that I’d come to know so well that I imagined it was real.

And so it was extremely strange to spend the weekend surrounded by so many imaginary people, all these fictional characters that I knew so well, and to see that after the show that was my high school experience went off the air, they’d continued to live their lives and age and change and have children and learn to use Facebook.

It was a strange experience—but wonderful too, like going to a Star Trek convention and having the characters hang out with you at the bar, not William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy but the actual Captain Kirk and Mister Spock.

I was pretty lucky in high school. It was a place where a supremely nerdy kid like myself, overweight and with a science fiction paperback perpetually tucked under one arm, could be well-liked (if not actually popular), get a good education, and build fond memories for a lifetime.