Hi, I’m Glen Held, class valedictorian, captain of the
football team and star of the high school play. I also was editor of the
Buccaneer, well known ladies’ man and…
“Glen, this is your high school reunion, everyone
knows you weren’t those things!”
Wait a minute, Marlee, look around at this crowd, the half that isn’t drunk is completely stoned. With their already fuzzy memories, maybe, just maybe, I can get away with it if I speak with enough authority and repeat it over and over again…
“Okay, Glen, go for it.”
Hi, as I was saying, I’m Glen Held, class valedictorian, captain of the football team and star of the high school play.
When we graduated, the National Democratic Convention which nominated Jimmy Carter was still a few weeks away as was the Montreal Summer Olympics where Nadia Comaneci scored her perfect ten and Sugar Ray Leonard won a boxing gold medal. Rocky was the movie of the year and Peter Finch who was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore didn’t get to take it anymore as he died before the best actor Oscar was given out. Silly Love Songs and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart inexplicably topped the Billboard songs of the year. The Jets and Giants both won three games apiece, the Islanders came in second and the Rangers fourth in the Patrick Division. The Knicks came in last. The Mets finished third in the NL east while the Yankees were in the World Series losing to…(let the crowd yell out the answer if they know.) Cincinnati Reds. Also in sports, the 1976 Mepham girls’ teams ruled, with the field hockey team becoming league champs, badminton having a 10 and one record and the girls’ volleyball team taking the championship.
And the 1976 Mepham graduating class of, you ready for it, 527 students! graduated lawyers, judges, CEO’s, DJ’s, writers, salesmen, nurses, mechanics, security personnel, teachers, teacher’s assistants, doctors, and so many more. Some of us are famous in our fields; some of us are famous in our minds. None of that matters though for this night we are all equally1976 graduates and here at the fabulous, five star, Best Western Hotel to celebrate the 40th anniversary of our graduation from good old W.C. Mepham High School, a school with a reputation for academic excellence, wrestling brilliance and a name virtually unpronounceable to anyone who didn’t go there.
Forty years ago whether you were running track for Coach Limmer, trying to figure out what the hell Mr. Chang was saying, gleefully racking up accidents on Barbara, Fitz and Levy’s driver’s ed simulators, marveling at the engineering miracle that was Mrs. Garrett’s beehive or just not giving a shit and spending your days on the front lawn, who would have thought that four decades would pass so quickly!
And don’t we all look good? Okay, not everyone looks good, but most of us, right?Okay, not most of us, but me, I look good or at least I look better than I did in high school. I got rid of that pesky hair, put on a couple of dozen pounds of muscular fat and stopped wearing sweater vests.
Anyway, about a year ago, people were wondering if we
were going to have a reunion. Nobody was stepping up to the plate and I can’t
blame them; this was a tough, tough job. Among other things, we had to find a
place to hold it, put down our own money and hope enough people came so we could
be reimbursed, we had to hunt down addresses to former classmates who were
scattered throughout the world and do all the rest of the things associated
with throwing the best reunion ever.
And then one night against a flame strewn background, Marlee Asulin as she’s known on facebook, or Marlene Diller as we know her, stood up, shook her fist and cried “As god as my witness, we will never go reunionless again.” But she couldn’t do it alone so she assembled a team to help her. A team that rivaled the great custodian crew of ’76 led by the immortal Bumpy. There was Robin Lippman Cook on decorations and common sense, Sue Saiwetz Parker on all things having to do with printing and who thrilled us with stories over who her boyfriend was from junior high up. Sherry Goldman on finance and keeping it real and me, Glen Held, class valedictorian, captain of the football team and star of the school play.
Tonight is a night to celebrate our past. It’s a night not only to catch up with old friends, but to make new ones. It’s a night when you suddenly realize that the boring guy in high school who you didn’t give the time of day to is still boring and that unattainable girl is still unattainable. A night where you call people by the wrong name and then insist they are wrong when they tell you otherwise. A night to think how much your fellow graduates have changed, for the worse. A night to listen to stories about events that everyone remembers except for you - even though you were allegedly there. A night, if you have a spouse here, to deny participating in those events even if you do remember them. Most of all, it’s a night to just be happy you’re here, you’re feeling pretty good all things considered and you’re glad to see so many people from a period of time that you remember as if it was yesterday. Geography might have thrown us together all those years ago, but now it’s something stronger that keeps us coming back to these reunions decade after decade, it’s a real spirit of '76.
