I went to my high school reunion last month.  I won't mention which milestone year, this was, but suffice it to say, it's been awhile since my Summit, NJ, high school class graduated.  I say my class because I didn't graduate from that high school.  I did 10th and 11th grade at  bizarre "open space" Wilde Lake High School in Maryland, passed through my math comprehensive tests and did enough extra English learning "pods" to get out of there a year early, and I did.  But that's a story for another day...

What fascinates me about my New Jersey reunions is every time, I pick up with my elementary school classmates as if it was yesterday, not only the three girl friends, all in other states, that I keep in touch with, but all of my former school mates, male and female.  When I speak to friends I've made as an adult in other places I've lived, this does not seem to be the norm at all!  We take a Franklin Elementary School reunion picture at every reunion, and I'm sure we all look forward to seeing our elementary school buddies next time around.

When I moved to Massachusetts several years ago, I thought I was hallucinating when I saw one of my elementary school colleagues walking across the front lawn of my son's elementary school here outside Boston.  No way, I thought.  Must be his twin.  But I checked the parent directory, and sure enough, my Franklin School mate, who had also been a junior high homeroom mate as his last name also started with B, had children attending my son's school. Small world. That was about ten years ago.  My son graduated from that school five years ago, and I haven't seen this mate since.  But I still know where he lives, and when I saw he was on the missing list for this upcoming reunion, I reported his whereabouts nine days before the actual event.  They called him the Tuesday before the weekend, and he changed his plans, and drove down Saturday to attend the big dinner Saturday night.  He was glad I had reported him.  So was I.  It was fun to see him.  

I spent over half an hour during the seemingly hyper-short evening talking to my best friend my first grade.  I haven't seen her since college when she was an au pair in France and visited me one of the summers I was living in Amsterdam.  I don't know how she found me then; we hadn't kept in touch.  But we share one interest in common:  art.  She went on to study at Yale and now teaches in New York.  She's a gifted artist and sculptor, and I'll happily give her a plug: www.sarahhaviland.com.  She's even more gracious and lovely than I remember, and talking to her was wonderful.  

But the strangest "reunion" was one that never happened.  Post-reunion, I discovered I had an email from, we'll call him Dylan Delagro, saying he was sorry he missed me at the reunion. I was about to answer him when I realized I was thinking of a different Dylan. 

His name (his real name, not the pseudonym I gave him here) sounds sort of familiar, but I can't quite place him or anything about him for the life of me. You would hope that if he thought it worth the time to write me a personal email, I would remember him.  But I don't.  I was in the car with my husband away from my computer when I realized I'd switched Dylans, so I texted the friend I went to the reunion with, a woman who keeps much better tabs on all Summit doings, past and present, than I do.  I told her about the email and that I couldn't remember this person, and she got right on it.  She could not remember him either.  He was not on the reunion web site.  He was not in her high school yearbook.  Little wisps of memory seep into my brain as we text back and forth.  I think he might have moved to Summit in junior high, I tell her.  And I think our friend Laurie (name changed again; I am protective) had a crush on him.  Ah ha.  She finds him in her junior high year book, and describes him to me, but alas, I still cannot remember him.  

I have not answered him.  Some things are better left unsaid.  "I'm sorry, I don't remember you," is probably one of them.  But "Dylan," if you are reading this, nice of you to remember me...I think.