“Oh my god-have you seeeen how she looks now?”

“She claims she works for a big firm in the city.”

“Poor kids-they’d never see her-with the clients she says she has.”

courtesy of swongled.com

Reminiscent of a conversation about what people have seen on facebook, this used to be typical of what could be heard at a school reunion.  People not only judging others but evaluating them on how far they’ve supposedly come in life – based on how they look, how they act, what they say and how they say it, in the space of… let’s face it, a few minutes.  Now, such information is readily available on (or can be easily deducted from) social networking sites such as facebook.

So what do people talk about at reunions now? Surely it’s not about who they married or divorced or kicked to the curb, how many children they have or what university they went to, what jobs they’ve had or the travelling they’ve done.  It can’t be!  They must know all that already?  Unless they still have a friend request they’re yet to confirm because they’re debating whether or not they should add the person they barely remember but who must be from school because that’s where all their ‘mutual facebook friends’ are from.  Social networking websites have perhaps taken the curiosity and the excitement out of reunions.   You can no longer see the look on someone’s face when they realise you’ve exceeded their expectations from school.  And they can no longer see the smug satisfaction on yours.  It’s a shame really.  After all, isn’t that the main reason people attend reunions.  To see what people do now.  To see what they have or haven’t accomplished.

Does that mean school reunions are now redundant? Irrelevant?  Not necessary?  Surely people have more courage to approach others over the internet, where no one witnesses the shame of your friend request being rejected?  Wouldn’t people be more likely to have those conversations from the comfort of their homes or offices, behind not only closed doors but computer screens?  Behind the computer screen, no one can truly judge how well you have or haven’t done.  The best they can do is scrutinise your spelling and grade your grammar.  But with the way ‘text spelling’ has caught on and transcended the Internet as well, what was once a money saver now covers actual inabilities to correctly spell even the simplest of words.  So not even your spelling can give away your qualifications or experiences or lack of them.

So why are school reunions still popular?  Perhaps they are not really an opportunity to recreate friendships and catch up on the present.  Perhaps they are an excuse to go back to the days when spelling really did open doors and clothes said everything about what group you belonged to and nothing about how much money you made, mainly because you earned $7 an hour at the local fast food place.

Despite our pretences of loving how busy we are and the million messages we constantly receive from facebook, text, email, voicemail and/or private message, perhaps we really do just crave face to face social interaction.  Sure, a facebook chat online may be great when we have five minutes of downtime but it doesn’t quite compare to a night of stories and drinking, and dancing.  With face to face interaction, if the conversation becomes stilted you can talk about the now, about what the person just out of earshot is wearing, about how great the weather is, about what the place is like where you’re at.  Online, it would be a little awkward to suddenly start typing: ‘my flatmate is wearing a horrible dress.’  One, the other person can’t see it so it excludes them straight away.  And two, if they can’t see it and join in then they more than likely don’t care.   Basically, if you haven’t seen the person in a long time, the conversation can very likely fall flat.  Particularly since you don’t know if the person on the other end is winding down with a drink or just logged on while they get paperwork done or watching TV.  The internet may take away one air of mystery  but it certainly creates a whole lot of others.  So send those messages and find out the facts – the chronological order of what someone did after school.  This leaves the necessary time at the reunion for what really matters – talking about how those things happened and who they happened with, and how those involved felt about it.  Afterwards you might find yourself more likely to make a phone call than to ‘talk’ online and you might meet several others you can add on facebook.  So really, everyone wins.