This weekend marked my 25th Reunion at Princeton University. Princeton Reunions are a beer-drenched spectacle that occur every year, rain or shine, and shine a spotlight on the 25th Reunion class. We got to lead the annual P-rade of alumni through campus; we had reserved seats in the reviewing stands to watch the other classes and floats stream by, and my classmates were front and center for all manners of events, discussions and hideous wardrobe combinations.
A quarter center removed from higher education, you’re supposedly in the “parent class.” It’s a rough generational boundary, and indeed, many of my classmates have kids who either just started or will be starting college. Leading up to the weekend’s parties, I began to define “old” in a variety of new ways, helped along by various classmate’s running commentary:
Old is when you have more repaired or damaged limbs than intact ones. I hit that point in 2004, when my broken left leg joined my herniated cervical disc, broken right foot, and broken left arm. I broke a few toes on my left foot earlier this year for good measure, so the fixed-in-post extremities now outnumber the good one 4-1.
Old is when your “haircut” extends to your eyebrows and ears and not as much to your head.
Old is when you wake up earlier than you used to go to bed, and feel worse.
Old is when your musical abilities need to be assisted with beer and volume.
Technically I should feel old, having reached a milestone measured in time and not accomplishment. But the weekend left me feeling invigorated, with perhaps a bit of perspective. I watched P-rade go by, something Princetoniana legend Freddy Fox once described as “watching your life in reverse”, with the Old Guard leading the way through the younger classes. Hearing the stories of reunions postponed during World War II, and the extensive military service of the classes of the mid-1940s, put the phrase “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” into a more fitting frame of reference. I saw the tiger mascot riding in a VW Bug, and thought of my classmate and club-mate, a sometime football game tiger mascot, who committed suicide before our first major (5 year) reunion.
Most of all, though, I set some simple goals this weekend: I want to join the Old Guard one day (at my 66th Reunion, fittingly to be celebrated in 2050). I want to march in the P-rade on an annual basis, and rejoin my friends Alan and Jordan who haven’t missed one of the 26 P-rades since we were in caps and gowns together. While there were myriad ways to count accomplishment in this weekend’s gathering including endowed buildings, vacation homes, sports cars, private charities, and positions of power and influence, I just want to get old and remain part of something much older and longer-lived than any of us. To do that, and to tell the story, is a sport in and of itself.
