I am plagued by two questions. Well, not plagued, exactly. More irritated. No, not even that, just curious. The first question is a real question, answers to which would be welcome. The second is more, well, rhetorical.
Okay, it’s like this. I’ve been invited to participate in a school reunion next summer, marking the 30th anniversary of our final year, before most of the class left for sixth-form college.
I’m really not sure whether I want to go.
Now, pace the usual teenage angsts, I had a super time at school. I had lots of friends, and did well. But I’ve not kept in contact with anyone from my schooldays to any significant degree, in which case I’m not sure I’d want to start now.
In one way I want to keep the memory of school untarnished. I want to remember us all as young, hopeful teenagers, not burdened down by the cares of middle-age, the ambitions thwarted, the hopes unrealized.
On the other hand, I am curious.
My class contained some seriously talented people, including several professional-grade musicians, a fashion designer, a stage manager at a major opera house, and a mathematician who went on to be a top-flight actuary. Perhaps my old classmates have done new, exciting and unexpected things, and it would be good to find out more.
My parents provide some inspiration. they have started going to dinners of their alumni group from fifty years ago, enjoy them hugely, and have picked up threads they might otherwise have lost completely.
So what would you do? Have you been to class reunions, and if so, were they revelations or disappointments?
And now, my second question, which is more rhetorical. The iPod part of my new iPhone contains more than 1600 tracks, which is more than enough to be getting along with. Yet when I set it on ‘shuffle’, it plays Bohemian Rhapsody more often than one would expect by chance. Why?
Now, I’m with Dr Johnson here, and think that when a man tires of London Bohemian Rhapsody he is tired of life; for there is in London Bohemian Rhapsody all that life can afford.
Perhaps it’s more than just chance. Perhaps my iPod knows what I like. Or perhaps it really is an expression of randomness. After all, having all one’s numbers come up might be exceedingly unlikely, but someone will win the lottery.
1. Go. But take the girrafe.
2. It’s a sign, obviously. I will interpret the sign in exchange for suitcase of crisp fivers.
Richard – I believe you and O’Hara are holding the Girrafe to ransom, the flaw in the plan being that I don’t really want her back.
I do have a third question, actually. Why is NN so pigging slow?
3. It’s too popular. It was better before it was famous.
Henry – I’ve been to a school reunion and it was genuinely interesting to see what people had done – I’d highly recommend it. (And everyone is impressed if you’ve had a book published!)
Dare I suggest that the frequency of BR is more down to Apple using a poor pseudo-random selector – perhaps always using the same seed.
1. Absolutely. You’ll get several blog posts out of it, if nothing else.
2. Yeah, that happens to me too. And I don’t even remember uploading Bohemian Rhapsody.
3. It’s our new time-dilation feature, which allows for a more Earthlike experience for anyone using the site at near-lightspeed velocities.
Remember, Henry – chance is lumpy. This may or may not be an answer to all three of your questions.
My take on reunions has been to look up anyone in whom I’m temporarily interested on Facebook. It’s been quite effective. Anyone who’s not on there, is within first- or second-degree connections. “Have you heard anything from so-and-so in the last two decades?” works well. After “making friends” you find out that an exchange or two of e-mails pretty much exhausts curiosity on both sides.
I thought for a moment that Richard’s answer to #3 was meant to apply to #2. And was perplexed.
Yes – Bohemian Rhapsody was always famous. And rightly so. It is a
reliefshame that those who attended SciBlog08 were spared my one-man rendition of this timeless classic.I say go! Tis better the regret of something you’ve done, than the regret of wishing you’d done something.
…in most cases…
Oh yeah, and B) Cos the radomizer isn’t. And C) it’s my fault, I tried to use “technology” yesterday and the universe stupidity budget couldn’t handle it and thus all technology in the known universe has been running slow while the budget deficit fills, from the coffers of whosknowwhere. Doubtless there is an alien technology orbiting some distant star cursing my name as their entire infrastructure collapses, LHC-like, in an effluvial eructation of liquid Helium. But whatever, I locked myself out of my bloody phone, so get stuffed.
Brooks is bored. Lock up your womenfolk.
I’ve enjoyed several small-scale, informal class reunions, which have been organized around backpacking trips or scientific meetings. High school reunions are intimidating, because an unusual number of my classmates became Texas state troopers (this, from a health professions magnet school!).
My parents recently returned from a combined reunion for my father’s small rural high school/middle school/elementary school, and one of the attendees and his wife were both permanently and distinctly blue in color, from taking colloidal silver. Apparently there are some New Age and other religious groups in the US who believe that colloidal silver protects against bacterial and viral infections.
Brooks is bored. Lock up your womenfolk.
Run away, I tell you! Head for the hills!
Apparently there are some New Age and other religious groups in the US who believe that colloidal silver protects against bacterial and viral infections.
It’s true. The rationale is that you’ll nver live long enough to catch anything.
I’d go. If nothing else it is a vacation and a change of scenery right? And it could be fun to see whatever happened to all the people?
This of course said by someone who’s never been to a school reunion – although I guess I haven’t really had a chance… (not a big thing back home) but the uni reunion was fun, just a few years later though mind you ;)
Those guiniea pigs look huge by the way. Are they Brazilian/Urugayian?
it plays Bohemian Rhapsody more often than one would expect by chance. Why?
It’s God favourite song and God doesn’t play dice.
Add “’s” somewhere in the previous post if you must.
Those guiniea pigs look huge by the way. Are they Brazilian/Urugayian?
No, they’re just very fat. And it’s a small basket.
It’s God favourite song and God doesn’t play dice.
‘Beelzebub
Demon Bunny of DOOMHas the Devil put aside for me?’I think not, Sir.
I have never been to a class reunion, because my school ill-advisedly changed name and focus in my final year of high school. So the school I had been at all along suddenly stopped existing, and there was a new school. New school didn’t work out, and it reverted back to the old school a few years later (and improved, with a unique bilingual Dutch/English program which I would have enjoyed so much if only I had been born ten years later) Anyway, they used to have reunions at every 5 or 10 year birthday of the school, but because they restarted counting, the school is less than 10 years old and there hasn’t been a big reunion.
My class did reunite online. About half of the people are there. They have achieved pretty much what was expected. No major failures or successes. So far…
I recently attended my 10 year high school reunion. I would not have survived but for the graces of the open bar. The whole thing was strangely nerve wracking and I am absolutely stumped as to why. It was definitely worthwhile though, as at least one person I had previously written off as lacking any redeemable human qualities grew up to be a really nice guy, somehow. Observing how people either fulfilled or failed their potentials a decade down the line was a voyeur’s dream, and fodder for hours of conversation with friends after the fact.
It will please you (I think) to learn, Henry, that the hit of the party was a woman who is now as a mammalian paleontologist. The whole room found her, and her work, positively fascinating and she was swamped with admirers. Then again, I went to a geek school.
Brooks is bored. Lock up your womenfolk.
without lowering the tone further than
a basket of Guinea Pigsnormal, there might be some truth to that…My school does the reunion thingy. I have found that I no longer know anyone and I earn less than all of them, having become a scientist, so all kudos for being the only one to live abroad is swiftly swallowed when it’s time to buy the next round and I get caught trying to escape through the cellar…
School reunions are a very mixed bag, esp. for folks with a multitude of schools in their background. In my case my grade school (Class of ‘53), rather than having reunions, has dinner together once a month. This is in Portland, OR, and the people who attend are the ones who remained. I have nothing in common with them because I left, but it’s nice to hear about them, though I grieve the losses that come ever more often.
My high school class (‘57) was seized upon by the Reunion Industry and promotes expensive and fancy events. Mine was one of the last classes before the school was washed o’er by a tide of black students displaced by the Vanport Flood. I suspect they are not on the master list of invitees. I WOULD like to see my old teachers, but they are all dead.
At Northwestern University (’61) I was in the School of Speech where I had many theatre student friends and I love to see them pop up in the media, but I hardly share their lives. Anyway, the school is renamed and refashioned and I feel no loyalty to the new stuff.
My retread years were in a seminary where my class (‘84) numbered 6. We had nothing in common and do not contact each other. The traditional speech at the 25 year anniversary was mostly about the janitor. Parallel was an MA in Religious Studies at the U of Chicago Divinity School (’80) which is my most prestigious degree, but I’m intimidated by those classmates and prefer to see them in print.
The reunions I really like are the ones among my Blackfeet students. THEY are the ones in whom I’m truly interested and by some magic, the ones I taught in ’61 have become my age! I love seeing how they turned out, often in spite of me. There is always a lot of laughter.
Prairie Mary
It breaks my heart to say it but, if the reviews are to be believed… perhaps Brian May and Roger Taylor should’ve passed on the recent Queen reunion.
In their defense (er, defence?), though – I saw Queen + Paul Rodgers perform in the States a couple years ago and they were great. I still love them.
Henry> I see. Fat guinea pigs on grass? didn’t know they could do that, although I guess if lamb can get fat on grass, why not other smaller animals….
You keep ’em in the basket all the time? Or do they really have a pen in the garden maybe?
My experience is the same as Heather’s – people find me on Facebook, we exchange a couple of messages, then… nothing. I’m friends with the vast majority of the people I actually want to be friends with, the rest of them can get lost! (insert unhappy high school experience here).
Actually one of my actual friends on Facebook went to an informal school reunion last week, and told me that all the old cliques are still in place, and that she just didn’t have the patience to try and be polite with the people who made her life hell at school. I couldn’t agree more… sometimes, missing events you’ve been invited to because you’re thousands of miles away is a good thing.
Thanks, everyon! You’ve pretty much made my mind up for me (but don’t stop commenting, though. I will beat Dr Rohn’s comment thread, one day, if it kills me… I will, I will …)
It will please you (I think) to learn, Henry, that the hit of the party was a woman who is now as a mammalian paleontologist. The whole room found her, and her work, positively fascinating and she was swamped with admirers. Then again, I went to a geek school.
I wonder if I know her… It’s that Indiana Jones effect.
I’m friends with the vast majority of the people I actually want to be friends with, the rest of them can get lost!
These reunion things do seem to be a mixed bag. On the cliques thing – now you mention it, Cath, I detect that my reunion is being organized by the self-selected Queen Bee of my old class, and even after all this time, I do not think I want to give her the satisfaction. And as Cath and Heather say – why go all that way to say the two sentences that you couyld say on Facebook?
It all reminds me of a long and very funny stand-up sketch by Victoria Wood about the horrible compulsion that one feels about going to one’s parents for Christmas. I can’t remember the line exactly, but it goes something like “you feel you have to leave the place you love, where you are admired and respected, and go back to a place where people still refer to you as ‘chunky-chops’”
Fat guinea pigs on grass? didn’t know they could do that
Yup, fat, grass-fed guinea-pigs. The females, anyway. They just chow down. The males, though – they just strut around waving their
iPhoneswillies at each other.You keep ’em in the basket all the time? Or do they really have a pen in the garden maybe?
When they are not eating grass in mobile pens in the garden they live in an increasing
slumdevelopment of hitches we call Guineapigopolis.It breaks my heart to say it but, if the reviews are to be believed… perhaps Brian May and Roger Taylor should’ve passed on the recent Queen reunion
I agree. If they were going to replace Freddie, they should have made a go of it with George Michael.
In their defense (er, defence?), though – I saw Queen + Paul Rodgers perform in the States a couple years ago and they were great. I still love them.
I got the live album Return of the Champions and I have to say it was quite good.
If they were going to replace Freddie, they should have made a go of it with George Michael.
(chokes laughing)
I believe they did perform with GM at one concert, perhaps even Freddie’s memorial, and he was v good. Basically you need a camp exhibitionist with an ear for a show tune. I’d have auditioned but they never asked.
Complete agreement with Heather and Cath on the reunion – good decision, Henry. I just passed up one that was within 1 hour of driving, for all the reasons the two mention.
Concerning BR – strange coincidence, but I am (completely non-randomly) stuck with it in the car on the drive to daycare every morning right now.. my 5yr-old son loves it. I think it’s the lyrics, he’s trying to figure it out.
Steffi: you’ll be aware of this subversive video
And, Heather: proof that Queen once rocked out with George Michael – awesome!
Oooh. Anyone else having a James Herriot moment?
Aw piss. NN is pissing me off today.
Anyone else having a James Herriot moment?
Not unless lunch with Brooks involves putting one’s arm up a cow’s backside, no.
And NN is indeed being slower than a very slow thing, or an arthritic snail with brakes on. You choose.
Henry, thanks for the link – yup, that’s pretty much us in the car every morning. You just hope nobody is looking… (while part of you WANTS them to).
My friends and I almost got thrown out of the Newcastle University student union building one Friday night for loudly singing Bohemian Rhapsody in the (slightly) quiet(er) bar. We finished just as the heavies arrived, and promised to behave ourselves for the rest of the
yearnight.Ha! Unbeknownst to you, you heard me singing. OK, there were a few people drowning me out, but I was there (at the back on the right, as viewed from the stage). If you look carefully, that’s my brother next to me.
This guy takes singing along to BR to an all-new level
Henry > how cute. They’re roaming around and getting fatter.
If they were Brazilian the next question would have been if you planned on… ehh.. ingesting them. Although, I can see that the question would be inappropriate so I’m not asking.
Regarding the Queen thing, I’ll refrain from talking about BR… but think about the real Queen.
Not unless lunch with Brooks involves putting one’s arm up a cow’s backside, no.
Not usually, but stranger things have happened…