I recently did something I’ve never done before. I went to a class reunion. Not my class, however. My husband’s law school class. He graduated twenty-five years ago. The reunion was held at the law school he attended. The school was hosting a number of reunions for people who graduated five years ago, ten, fifteen, twenty, even thirty years ago. Alumni were grouped by year, and assigned a specific room to eat in. The more recent graduates were seated at a long table in the building’s glass-walled foyer. It’s a new building, replacing the one my husband had classes in, which was a hideous concrete high-rise. The new building is elegant and graceful, with a courtyard and stone floors. Other years were given small rooms with a round table and lit candles which I found very pretty. Our room was a lecture hall. We sat where students sit, in tiers, facing a white board. The lighting was harsh. The room was ugly. The tablecloths were silly – who puts tablecloths in a lecture hall? The one floral arrangement, set at a corner of the first row tier, didn’t little to make the atmosphere elegant, or remotely festive. What annoyed us both was having to pay fifty-five dollars each to attend. For one hundred and ten bucks, I didn’t want to eat in a lecture hall. The servers kept the wine coming, for which I was grateful. And the food was decent. And my husband got to see how well, or badly, his fellows had aged in a quarter century. We spent a little over and hour, and then fled. I’ll say this – everyone there looked prosperous and successful, which I suppose is what law school is all about. And I know the school itself would like people to open their checkbooks and be generous. Which we might have been inclined to do, if we hadn’t had second-rate dinner in a classroom. What were they thinking? Maybe we’ll go back for my husband’s thirtieth. Any one care to bet on the likelihood of that?
