For over twenty years I resisted going to high school reunions for my Class of ’79. The first one was a decade after I graduated and I chose not to go. In 1999 I was invited again. Again I think about staying home.

It wasn’t indifference that kept me away, my high school years were good for me, but going would have compromised a standard I had set for myself in my senior year. My goal upon graduation was ridiculously ambitious but not entirely unfeasible: I would become a world-famous rock star by the age of twenty-two.

Five, then ten years came and went and at twenty-seven he was still just a part-time musician and famous, perhaps, to a few dozen local rock club patrons.

At thirty-seven, my goal was now grossly incongruous with everything else going on in my life. I was a first-time husband, father, and homeowner with little spare time to pursue my fading dream. Every once in a while, though, when the stress got too heavy, I’d dust off that teenage fantasy and tell myself that I still, at my age, had a slim chance.

So I skipped the first two meetings, determined to come back to my peers as a big hit or not come back.

Last October it was my forty-seventh birthday, and even though I wasn’t famous yet, my life had turned out well. In March, I received an email with “Thirty Year Reunion Class of ’79” in the subject line and made my decision before the message finished downloading. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the time had come for me to go.

My wife encouraged me and suggested that I would have more fun going alone. So, it was just me who walked up to the front entrance of the Holiday Inn that night, dressed to the nines and amazed that I was actually doing it. I straightened my suit, pushed open the doors, and entered the lobby, my pulse racing.

Who would you recognize? Or who, for that matter, will recognize me?

The first question was answered within minutes of my arrival. A crowd of forty-somethings filled the hotel bar, and a blond woman dressed in red looked instantly familiar, even in profile. She looked at me when I approached.

“Leslie!” I said happily. “How are you?”

“Claudine,” she corrected.

He turned his back on me and ignored me for the rest of the night. Claudine had been a mega-popular senior and if I pricked her ego, it was an honest mistake. The current Claudine really did resemble the overweight Leslie she had known in high school.

It turns out that a Leslie that no longer existed.

She arrived at eight o’clock, an apparent stranger. She must have lost a pound a year since graduation and now, at forty-eight, she looked amazing. Unlike Claudine, the mature Leslie seemed pleased that her classmates didn’t recognize her. They would look at her name tag and then back at her, eyes wide with disbelief.

The night progressed and I found that, despite my appalling lack of fame, my former classmates were greeting me with nostalgic delight. We asked ourselves the same predictable questions and gave our answers in quick bullet points: Yes, I still live locally. Married? Almost fifteen years. Kids? Two, nine and ten. Yes, I still play music, from time to time.

More than once I remembered something funny that I said or did back in the seventies. It’s funny how people from your past remember things like that. You may doubt its accuracy, but if a second classmate corroborates it, chances are it really did happen.

Some people change and some don’t. A girl who had been as shy as a mouse was now a bubblegum-chewing chatterbox and fun to boot. However, there were others whose social skills were still as awkward as she remembered them. I’d do my part by asking the right questions, but if the other person doesn’t return the serve, the conversation will sizzle and stop like an empty car.

However, I developed an elegant escape strategy. If the talk came to an awkward pause, I would look over my classmate’s shoulder and then nod as if someone were calling my name.

“Uh-oh! I’d better go there!” She would say with sudden urgency, “But hey, it was great seeing you!”

By the end of the night, most of the attendees had formed the same social groups that defined them as teenagers. Since he was remembered to me as a rock musician, an identity acceptable to most cliques, he still enjoyed a certain diplomatic immunity. I fluttered gently between a bald pack of jocks, a Nerd standing alone near the bar, and several Heads outside smoking at wrought iron tables. The Heads, more than any other group, stood the test of time with gray hair and denim vests bought when Carter was president.

I left at a quarter past eleven at night, immensely glad I decided to attend. I spent the night not being famous and nobody seemed to care.

I’ll definitely be going to the next one, now that I’ve gotten rid of those ridiculous standards. They are talking about a thirty-five year reunion, tentatively scheduled for 2013.

That gives me five more years to be good and famous.