Classic Rant #1,057 (October 7, 2013): The Mother of All Reunions ... At Least For Me

We had our Reunion this weekend, and I have to say, it went off without a hitch ... or nearly without a hitch.

People were happy to see one another--many people hadn't seen other people for 40 or more years--and pretty much everything went hunky dory.

Again, this Reunion celebrated a neighborhood, rather than a school or a class, so it was a bit different than your normal, everyday reunion.

When you celebrate a school or a class, you generally know a finite amount of people who will come to such a thing, because there are only so many people in a class, and even a school.

But when you do a neighborhood reunion, you really are looking at a pool of many, many people in many, many different age groups, and that is what we got at this Reunion.

We got people who were kids in our old development, Rochdale Village, kids who are in their 50s and early 60s, many of whom are parents and grandparents themselves now.

We also got people who were parents way back when, and are now in their 80s.

And not everybody knew everybody, which made it that much different from a class reunion.

We had 150 people, and everybody broke into their own groups, many of the same groups they fraternized with 40 years ago.

My group certainly did, and I saw my friends, basically sitting at one table, although I did have other friends sitting elsewhere in the room.

I also knew several other people there, and they were scattered across the room.

I spoke to dozens of people, welcomed them to our party, and made my way across the room pretty well.

There were some problems at the door with whether certain people paid, but all of the problems were resolved pretty quickly.

One person, who gave me heck over on Facebook for excluding his name from my final list of attendees--I was never told he paid by the person who received his check, and then I made the mistake of skipping over his name when I reviewed another list given to me of payees--actually was left off the master list this time, and my list had him! He was not a happy camper, not gracious at all, but you get all kinds at a thing like this.

Other people were standoffish, but again, this is a mix of people, so it had to be expected.

Most people were very complimentary, and I thanked them for being so appreciative.

I really appreciated it myself.

But I got to see my friends, my true friends in the old neighborhood, and heck, I even told a girl who barely remembered me that I had a mild crush on her way back when!

There was a point where I have to tell you, I felt like the father of the bride or the bar mitzvah boy.

I was sitting alone, and it all hit me at once.

I was the one who came up with this idea a few years ago, with the 50th anniversary of our development staring us in the face, to do something special to celebrate that mark.

It ultimately took four people to put this thing together, and while we fought like cats and dogs most of the time, the end goal was never part of those arguments--to make this the best darn party that we could.

And we did.

So here I was sitting like a proud papa, and it all hit me that the many months of agreements, entanglements and yelling and screaming had come to an end, and a very pleasant end indeed.

I guess I could not ask for more, could I?

Well, I could. I wish I could have taken more photos of my friends--I didn't get all of them in my photos, so guys, please send me what you have--and my family was there, and I didn't take a single picture of them. My bad, I guess. I was so caught up in the moment, I didn't think ...

Now for the 75th anniversary in 2038 ... nah, I won't be involved in that, not because I won't be here, but because I just can't do this again.

But be warned, anybody who does get involved ... well, you had better start your planning now.

Take it from me, you will be in for a long haul, a very, very long haul.

But I hope that it ends up as well as this one did.