My five year high school reunion just happened, and I went home in order to attend it. I can specifically recall stating, “Now I never have to see any of you again,” upon graduation, but the timing and everything just happened to be so convenient that not going would have been a greater commitment. This isn't to say I had no reason to go; I hoped to reacquaint with a couple of buddies who had fallen out of touch. They didn't show, however, and the whole experience was deemed wasted time.

The whole thing was, uncannily, a recreation of high school. My friends sat around and played games, content, there was a large table full of cackling girls, and the socialite folk who everyone kind of knew floated around talking to all — basically all of the old cliques reappeared. I doubt this was a carefully calibrated attempt to keep the nerds in their place while the cool kids enjoyed each other's company, instead, no one really cared what the others were up to. Myself included. I felt no burning need to talk to any of these old people who might know who I'm talking about when I say “Mr. Crapsner,” (real name Kapsner). Our shared experience, attending that high school, was not sufficient to create a bond between us.
             
Not to say I'm not a sentimental guy. I can be. I have a tendency to save anything handwritten from people, even people I don't care about having written messages that I disapprove of. Also, movies tickets are piled up to my ears, even the shitty ones. And when my mom mentioned the government program to subsidize replacing old, fuel-inefficient cars with new ones, I was appalled to learn my workhorse of a Crown Vic met the specifications. Now, each and every time I drive it, I'll be thinking negatively about how much life is left in it, and that it's worth more dead. So it clearly was just my high school class that stimulated such apathy.

By contrast, if there had been a reunion of my EMT class (every morning before regular high school my entire senior year), I would have been overjoyed to see where everyone landed five years later, and I knew all of them for less lengthy durations over a lesser period of time. But we learned how to save lives together, and how to do it among sleep deprivation, a massive homework load, and the inane demands of our instructor. In short, we survived something together, and came out better for it. Normal high school, I can barely remember a thing that I learned and the only sense of survival comes from the social community itself, so those people don't mean a thing.

So the quality of the shared experience is what's significant. Two soldiers, from even different military branches at totally different times, both stationed in the same country at wartime shared a common bond. Similarly, two alcoholics in AA, even if they don't know each other's real name, feel a commitment to their fellow. The challenges associated with my EMT class might have given us a greater attachment (not that I'm comparing that class to going to war or being an alcoholic). So then is it the intensity of the occurrence that makes the shared experience matter enough?

Quit obviously, peril helps, as in my previous two examples, but I doubt it's the only factor. Ability of one to relate matters. The alcoholic does not feel the same urge to help the gambling addict, though the latter's life was just as ruined by addiction. Sure, it might seem selfish, to only care about those people whom did something similar enough to yourself, but that's what seems to be behind this issue of shared experience. Certainly, however, relateability isn't the deciding factor, since I certainly can relate to the position of my high school classmates.

It's got to be a combination of those two things: intensity and ability to relate. Wanting to walk up to someone who you really don't know, and strike up a conversation with them, or even more, is driven by some mixture of what both of you did and the similarities of those doings. Really, it just makes sense, and has me realizing that I will not be attending my college class reunion in four more years.

Mark Johnson is an unprofessional writer who drinks too much and smokes too little. Witty, unconventional, cavalier, badass: all terms rarely used by others to describe him. Mark takes nothing half as serious as perhaps it should be taken; to date, this has not gotten him physically harmed, but he worries. Caving to public pressure, he has a personal blog at whynotjustblog.blogspot.com