Here's a Toast

This week will mark thirty-five years since I graduated from college.

I know.

It doesn’t seem that long ago, really. I remember the day pretty clearly. Marching down Locust Walk with a horde of other similarly berobed about-to-be-alumni along with a pile of my friends (including one from the year behind us who borrowed his roommate’s gown and marched with us since his roommate couldn’t attend). My parents came and sat in the audience down at Franklin Field. It was a fairly warm day and they put bottles of water under the seats, though that might have also been a general nod to the hungover in the crowd. The graduation speaker was a Congresswoman from Colorado who had run for president not long before, without success. I couldn’t tell whether she was enthusiastic or drunk while she was giving her speech and to be honest it didn’t really matter. It was a perfectly fine speech and then we were out into the world, graduates looking for a hot meal.

I lived off campus for a year after that, figuring out what to do with my life. I don’t know if I ever did. Mostly I just bobbed from one thing to the next until suddenly I’m in my late 50s with a career and a family and a house in the midwest, and it’s been pretty good I have to say. Maybe having a plan isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I would have forgotten about this anniversary entirely except that Penn places a great deal of emphasis on alumni as we are a significant source of revenue for them. Not me personally, of course. I’ve seen their finances – I need it more than they do. But in general. As part of this emphasis we have Class Officers who seem to make a point of tracking people down now and then to remind us about the halcyon days of our youth down at the old alma mater.

So I’ve been getting emails from them for weeks now about whether I will be attending the festivities on Friday (no, it’s our finals week too) or making donations (also no, see above). This time around, though, they’ve set up a system where we can all fill out some forms online and create our own Personal Page on the Class Web Site.

I find that idea a bit odd.

For one thing, most of the people I want to keep up with I either already keep up with or they were from different classes. Or both. Could be both! In an age of social media, losing track of people is a choice. Do I want to find everyone else? Maybe. Do I want others to find me? Maybe, but less so. Most of the people I don’t keep track of were good folks who just drifted in other directions – it’s not like we left on bad terms – but after a while you just accept that and move on.

For another thing, I can’t really conceive of what I would put on such a page. I went to college with people who had plans. They were going to be CEOs, doctors, lawyers, movers and shakers. The alumni magazine follows me everywhere I go – seriously, their circulation department needs to be recruited en masse into the FBI, though their billing department should probably be let go since I have never once given them any money – and sometimes I will check the back pages for the alumni notes to see if anyone I know is in them. Sometimes there are! And they are up to Big Things! And good for them, really. But I have my own life and it is mine and I like it but most of the things I like about it I wouldn’t put in the alumni notes.

I have not made my page. I suspect it will not happen. Thus ever it goes.

So to the Class of ’88, I wish you well from afar. Drink a highball at nightfall, be good fellows while you may.