Do you ever have dreams where the people and places from your life are a bit mixed up? Like, you’re at your old high school with your college friends; or you’re in high school again and they won’t let you graduate, but for some reason you’re still working your current job?

(Is it just me?)

That’s what the Pomona College 5-year reunion felt like to me: a surreal experience, surrounded by people who I was not supposed to be surrounded by anymore. On the other hand, since it took place on campus, it also had the disconcerting effect of being as if I’d never left, and my life now is some sort of dream.

In a word: weird.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the chance to catch up with people. It’s just that I’m already “caught up” with most of the people I was really close to, anyway. I know what’s going on in the lives of Sarah and Mir, and I get occasional Amit updates. Nicki and Justin still live here in LA, and I run into some of my physics profs at Caltech from time to time. Jenica emails regularly, and I see Sabrina whenever she’s in LA.

There were dozens of people from my class at alumni weekend, and I recognized all of them – but none of them were long-term friends. Lots of close-while-we-were-in-Calculus-togehter friends, or always-ate-lunch-together-as-freshman friends, people who I’d always say hello to or feel free to sit with in the dining halls. But seeing these people 5 years later turned out to be less meaningful than I’d expected.

Maybe it’s just that a 5-year reunion is sort of a silly concept. No one’s changed enough to be interesting, but everyone’s just different enough to be slightly hard to recognize. There were two girls that I lived with freshman year (we were in the same Sponsor Group, for those of you familiar with Pomona terminology), and I would have called them fairly good friends of mine for those first few months of school. They were both at the reunion, and at first I couldn’t tell which was which! They’d switched hair styles (curly was now straight, and vice versa), and both had a super-high-energy sort of “Oh my gosh, how are you I haven’t seen you in so long” attitude. The one I remembered having freckles didn’t anymore, and vice versa. It actually took some help from Sarah and Mir (who did not actually LIVE with these people) to set me straight. It also didn’t help that the nametags (wood with stickers on it to make it look sort of like burned-in lettering) kept flipping around backwards. They actually looked disconcertingly like little gravestones.

See? Gravestones:

Two other people from my sponsor group are now married (to each other, I mean – they started dating the second week of freshman year). They are EXACTLY the same as they were as freshman. They look the same, they talk the same, they have NOT CHANGED.

Several of the, how shall I say this, more weird and annoying people in my class had also NOT CHANGED. One of these people always seems drunk, despite the fact he’s completely sober. After our first encounter with him over the weekend, I seem to recall Kris mentioning to Sarah that he seemed drunk. Indeed.

Another was one of those tragically unhappy people, who always needs a friend. Like, neeeeds a friend. She used to wander up to my dorm room, because no one on her hall was friendly. (This should have been my first clue she was needier than normal, because out of 20+ people she couldn’t find a single decent human being.) For a while, I tried to be her friend. But you know what? There are some people who are not worth the energy. I thank her for teaching me this. (I successfully avoided her at the reunion, and did not feel guilty at all.)

About two hours into the reunion, I realized I was already forgetting what everybody was up to. You can only ask so many people where they’re living / what they’re doing / if they’re married before you start to confuse the answers. However, it helped quite a lot that pretty much everyone:

• Lives in Colorado or in Northern California
• Is almost done with a PhD, OR just out of law school, OR just quitting a job to go to law school

We also noticed that lots of people brought boyfriends, but there were no husbands present. Mine certainly wasn’t; he’s way past the proving-my-love-for-you stage and was completely unwilling to suffer through such an experience. Too bad for Kris, who probably could have used the company.

The highlight of the day for me was the Glee Club concert – especially the part where we all got to go up on stage and join in with the college songs. This is especially funny, because as students, the Glee Club mostly hated the college songs. (Ok, not all of them – most of us at least liked “Over the Years.”) The only reason the Glee Club sings the dorky college songs is to make the alums happy. And sure enough – it made me extremely happy to run up there and spot all my old glee club friends, not just from my year but from the years bracketing me (those who still live in CA, anyway). Jason Hewitt, who was one of the biggest “I’m not singing these stupid college songs” grumblers while actually in the Glee Club, was one of the most enthusiastic alumni voices there.

Glee Club + Over-enthusiastic Alums:

Highlight #2 would have to be our tour of Mudd-Blaisdell, where Sarah, Mir, Amit and I all lived our Junior and Senior years. Ah, what a dorm! The lack of air conditioning, the ugly pinkish-with-a-grid-pattern carpets, the slightly-different-pink walls and trim. Alas, dear old MB has had some serious renovations. All the pink is now gray and blue, and the lucky kids who live there now have CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING. In a dorm. And wireless internet. We thought it was funny that Pomona spent years and lots of $$ rewiring all the dorms to have ethernet – and after another couple of years, it was all made obsolete thanks to wireless.

Mudd-Blaisdell Reunion:

“The Tower” (where I lived with Sarah and Mir our last year) is currently inhabited by some sophomore guys, one of whom we startled in his underwear, and they were quite willing to chat with us about Pomona, the dorm, future career plans, etc. One of them mentioned how great it was that the Tower had two showers in the bathroom. “Two whats???” We had to see for ourselves. This is a floor with only three rooms, mind you, and their own bathroom – with two showers! What decadence! We thought we were pretty lucky to have the one!

I have to say, I came out of the whole experience feeling somewhat ahead of the curve. Ok, so I don’t have a PhD, MBA, or law degree – I can live with that. I’ve already got a job I like; there’s no more school in my future, and I’m not career-hopping. I live in a city I love (despite the CRAPPY ASS real estate market), so no more where-to-live angst. Most of all, it was great to head home and get back to Jeff, who I sorely missed during the day. Surrounded by all those college people and college things, I mostly realized that I do not miss it – not ANY of it – anymore. I loved it while I was there, but four years was plenty; I’m liking the rest of life a lot better.

(Actually, I take that last bit back – I do miss the mint-chip and coffee ice cream shakes that the Coop is willing to make. Yum.)

The Suities – we haven’t really changed: