B oth of us have 25th college reunions fast approaching. And as we write this, neither of us has registered. The emotions that these events tend to inspire – most notably shame, dread and regret – loom so large in our psyches that we spent the pandemic co-writing a novel that hinges on reunion-phobia.
Apparently we’re not the only ones. A friend of ours, Rebecca, hasn’t mustered the courage to RSVP to her 20-year-college reunion in June. “I am terrified,” she said.
“I both really want to go and I really don’t want to go.” A member of Lauren’s book-club WhatsApp chat had a similar reaction last month. “I have my reunion in May and I am already panicking.
” Meanwhile, Rachel finds herself in a group text (titled “On That Reunion Deal”) with old friends debating the pros and cons of going. “It’s more of an opportunity to be with YOU GUYS who I don’t see nearly enough,” wrote one of her college friends. “I do not need to be in the beer tent or whatever,” she said in typical Gen-X fashion.
Why do reunions inspire such anxiety? Could it be that the films of our youth have primed us to melt down at the prospect of a weekend-long show-and-tell game centered on how we’ve been spending our precious and once-promising lives? “What am I going to say? ‘I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork’?” asks the postgrad assassin played by John Cusack in the 1997 dark-comedy movie Grosse Pointe Blank, as he contemplates attending his own 10-y.
