By Peggy Keener

Recently I was standing on Main Street looking with astonishment at a hopeless snarl of traffic. At the head of a long stalled line were two cars moving in tandem at a snail’s pace. In each front seat sat a couple, their white heads barely peeking over the steering wheels. As they crept by, I could see their dry, creviced faces constricted into frowns of fervent concentration.

Who were these people, anyway? Was there an AARP convention in town and they were being honored as its first members? Well, it seemed as clear as a Windexed window that these crusty old souls should no longer be driving. At their advanced age — shouldn’t they be home rocking?

I have to admit to a sudden sense of relief and gratitude that I wasn’t like them. Even in my dotage I was not wrinkly, weathered, worn and waspish. Not me!

So, with dismay I continued to watch. Then I was startled — indeed aghast! As their cars finally dragged by, I saw identical signs hanging off both back fenders: “AHS or BUST!” I did a double take. And that’s when I knew. These doddering crotchety ancient relics … oh, m’gosh! … were my classmates! And what’s more, they were on their way to our 60th Class Reunion!!!!!!

My left eye (the one most rutted with radiating crow’s feet) began twitching involuntarily as the impact of this realization set in for I was completely deluged with the reckoning. It was so powerful! So sobering! So scary! For crying out loud … I was them!

To be sure, a class reunion is a fascinating phenomenon. The truest thing about it is this: above all else, it is the most factual, authentic, unvarnished paradigm of the reality check. Where else can you see yourself so vividly reflected in the faces of absolutely everyone in attendance? Creepo! And isn’t it true that as we so loquaciously chat with our old pals, we are each taking a measure of just how far we have progressed downward in this thing called “looks.” Oh, m’god … do I really look like her? Him? And as the answer to that sets in, that is also when the proverbial you-know-what precisely hits the fan.

On the good side, a 60th Class Reunion is also when we become cognizant of the fact that cataracts, glaucoma and general failing vision are not all bad. In fact, sometimes — like right now — they can be merciful.

There are, additionally, two other reunion truths. When in life does it ever happen that we are with a large crowd of people who are — within a few weeks of each other — all the same age? It’s freakishly disturbing in a homey sort of way and explains why the comparisons are so immediate. At the same time, is it not truly a wonder that so many of us have survived to this 78th year in our lives! Over eighty of our classmates have not. The sudden assault of this fact brings a tempering gloom to an otherwise joyous occasion.

Our 60th Reunion has been planned with great care: lots of available seating, walker friendly entrances, microphones for the hard of hearing, elevators, name tags with enlarged graduation photos cut straight out of a 1956 Austinian, easily digestible food, names in bold extra large print and no loud band. The only background music will be the velvety oh-so-quiet crooning of Nat King Cole.

As an addendum to these plans, I’m thinking of setting up small kiosks for the distribution of eye drops, Geritol, hearing aid batteries, magnifying glasses, classmate cheat sheets and Depends — all free with reunion payments.

One thing that is remarkable about class reunions is this: since graduation, no matter where we have advanced or de-vanced in our lives, we are instantly reverted back to what we were during our senior year. If we were the class clown or the champion athlete or the valedictorian or the homecoming queen … we still are! The very moment we cross over the reunion threshold, we’re instantly rerouted back into who we were then. Whoooosh!

No way are we that bald headed guy over there with the big pot belly. We’re still the hero who dunked the winning point at the state basketball tournament. And those ladies standing by the door — the ones with the over-permed gray hair whose busts are resting just at or below their waistlines — are not really them. They’re the gorgeous beauties who made up the homecoming queen’s court. And furthermore, the once-upon-a-time shortest girl in the class now has lots of company. Most all of us girls (and in some cases the guys) have shrunk down to her height.

There is, as well, another pragmatic side to reunions. It’s like this. If we never amounted to much in high school, it’s a tough bet to convince our classmates that we actually, finally, made something of ourselves. No one quite believes it. On the flip side, pity our old classmate luminaries who went on to achieve little in life. But, then, do we actually know who they are for quite honestly we never meet those folks? They don’t show up at reunions. And who can blame them for who among us wants to showcase their personal shortcomings?

Reunions are so transparent, so blatant, so honest. We all know from whence we came. Thus, my friends, a word of advice: leave your high falutin’ airs at home. They just don’t work at reunions.

I expect our Saturday night banquet will be disrupted by a steady stream of exiting and re-entering men. Where years ago we women rushed to restrooms due to pregnancy bladder pressure, it is now the men’s pesky prostates that have them on the run. Consideration has been given to this matter. Aisles will be wide and clear for their hasty retreats.

I’ve discovered that as the years have progressed, I have trouble recalling my classmates. Imagine that! I’ve concluded that it’s because we all have such … well … droopy saggy low-down faces. Only when we smile — a powerful muscular movement which lifts everything back up into place — do we reflect our old 1956 faces. There’s a valuable lesson here. While attending a reunion of any kind, smile to beat the band! It erases decades of wear and tear. It is also cheaper and less painful than a surgical facelift.

I plan to wear gloves to this reunion. You know, to hide the multiple brown spots on my hands … a sure sign, if ever there was one, of my advanced age. I hesitate to call these blemishes “liver spots” because I have always had an aversion to this particular awful offal meat. Still, that is what they are. How awkward would it be, I question myself, to show up in mittens? Would that bring even more attention to my disfiguring speckles? I can’t decide. I’ll just have to wait until the night of the big banquet and see how they look with my dressy outfit. Perhaps I’ll settle on a muff.

Reunions bring with them the regret that we have not lost those ten — twenty? — poochy pounds. That we should have dyed our hair — what is left of it. These laments are accompanied by the fear that our dentures may fall out, or at least shift to the right while we’re eating our banquet dinner. (Pray that corn on the cob is not on the menu!) Moreover we cling to the hope that our memories are intact. More than anything the words I most dread thinking go something like this: “Did I really go to the prom with you! Was it you who gave me my first kiss? What was your maiden name and just how do you spell that?” And finally the worst: “Are you sure we graduated together?”

In my ineptitude and ever so convenient myopia, I vainly fancy myself as having been little changed by the intervening years. Surely the last six decades have barely left their mark on me. Well have they?, I ask myself with increasing trepidation. Meanwhile, like quick sand, uncertainty sucks at my content. To counteract this, I’m taking another brazen step. You see, I badly need to swaddle my wattle, so I’m wearing my chinstrap to the reunion. Do you think anyone will notice? Will it make me look like I did sixty years ago?

Oh, for crying out loud! How can I shake off this dismaying, niggling, discomfiting feeling that my classmates may stand before me, peer with perplexity into my rheumy eyes, and then in frank bewilderment, beseechingly implore, “Do I know you?”