They Can’t Forget Me If They Never Knew Me

So I got an invitation in the mail to attend the 35th reunion of my college—a private religious university where I got my undergrad degree in ministry.  The envelope was addressed to me and my former spouse. They got my new address right but not my new life. 

It’s interesting how much my old Alma Mater tries to maintain contact with me because when I attended, no one even saw me, much less knew my name. If I were to attend the reunion, I would remember a great number of my former classmates but they wouldn’t remember me.  

I guess I can’t really blame them. I didn’t speak much in the classes, or outside of them, for that matter. When I did I felt like I was intruding on their private conversations.  They often looked at me as if I was odd and perhaps stupid, and I came to see them the same way. I didn’t jockey for attention on campus in any of the prescribed ways.  I was too busy working and going to class to do any of their deadly dull activities. 

I’m sure all of my professors are dead now because they were old then. In fact, they had taught my father’s classes thirty years before. They were an odd, mostly sweet group of guys with their moldy suits and musty lesson plans, none of whom could remember me even when I attended. It may not have been their fault. I just couldn’t bring myself to sit on the front row like others did, panting like a puppy about to wet itself to show how excited I was to be there.  

I was never one of them and in hindsight I realize I never wanted to be. So, no, I don’t plan on going back to visit friends I never actually had.