40th reunion, part 1

Lawrence Toppman:

My 40th high school reunion comes around the last weekend of this month, and I was briefly tempted to go. I can't, because I'll be in the middle of rehearsals for "Il Trovatore," but I had a momentary flash where I walked around in a new sports jacket and waited for people to say, "You're looking better these days. You've lost weight."

Then I realized how pathetic that was.

In the first place, I haven't seen most of those folks since Richard Nixon was president. In the second place, it would mean some part of me still defined himself as the paunchy dweeb too timid to ask for a date all through high school. That guy wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over, implanting a new image in the minds of old classmates.

Of course, that alone would be a dweeby thing to do. So I'm lucky my Opera Carolina responsibilities prevent me from giving in to that impulse.

I suppose all but the most emotionally secure among us are still stuck in high school psychologically, harboring some tiny desire to show people we turned out well. Maybe that's why Hollywood makes an incessant stream of movies about the sexual and romantic needs of 17-year-olds: Those same teenagers still dwell in our adult souls, suppressed but full of adolescent longings.