Homecoming glory
It’s December. Before the alumni of any colleges and universities can focus on Christmas, they look forward, often with mixed feelings, to the annual homecoming. It is often the only time all year that they get to see their former classmates, batchmates and teachers. It’s another chance to tell all the old jokes, recycle all the old stories, and continue to make fun of those classmates who didn’t really fit in back in school even if they’ve accomplished much since graduating. All in all, it is the greatest chance to rehash high school life through harsh reality or rose-colored retellings.
Homecomings are also great times for present and former athletes. Well, the current athletes can’t really drink or stay up late, particularly the basketball players. And they’re probably wondering what they’re doing there, being cheered by the same crowds that cheer them during their games. Who are these people again? It’s not exactly a comfortable experience for them, knowing what pressure they face from the classmates of their brothers, uncles, fathers, female family members and everyone within six degrees of separation, particularly if you have a championships tradition.
Don’t get me wrong, reunions are a great event. It is everyone’s comfort zone. In many cases, you get to drink on campus, and who hasn’t wanted to try that at least once? The men get to smile at the co-eds who turned them away and are now wrinkled and chubby, while the women get to snicker at the former jocks and cool kids who’ve struggled in life. Also, the long lapses between these occasions show you how much everyone has changed (a polite way of saying “aged”), and a stinging reminder of your own mortality. It appears as if everyone is a few pounds fatter, has a nicer car, bigger house, more jewelry, or simply more. Though it isn’t meant to be a contest, it always is, actually, isn’t it? At least for some, it is in their minds. And their self-evaluation they always keep to themselves.
But for athletes, homecomings are always glorious. Every year, each host batch allows them to relive their breathtaking brilliance for a new audience. Every year, the myth gets retold again and again, with further and further embellishment by the ones telling the stories. This keeps the spirits of the younger generation in tune with what has gone on before. It validates their elders, even those whose role in the championships past was at best a vicarious one. It is a great feeling to belong. For the athletes themselves, no matter their age, it is a chance to be thankful that they managed to purchase immortality with their passion generations ago. Homecomings are a great time to have been an athlete. There is also a silent comparison between the past and the present. You can smell it, even if nobody says it. But to the general public, they are all heroes.
In the digital age, everyone attending reunions is a captive audience. It’s like going to your grandfather’s house and being made to watch video (it used to be film) of you as a child. Of course, it comes with all the bells and whistles of crowd noises, visual effects and a thumping soundtrack that might blow some alumni’s pacemakers. But it’s all in good fun, even if sometimes, they don’t consider that half of the audience doesn’t really care for sports, wasn’t there for that game, or didn’t attend the homecoming for the video. Some of them want to see if they can still hit on the cheerleader they fancied 20 years ago, and the video is in the way of getting that girl drunk.
Homecomings are always a chance for today’s generation of cheerleaders and school bands to fire up those rusty old heats and creaking joints of their forefathers. I’ve known of former cheerleaders who have commemorative jackets made partly because, after having children, the old uniforms don’t fit anymore. But that is the story there, the bittersweet caveat: we don’t fit the same molds anymore. We’ve had our chance to become something better, and hopefully, we’ve succeeded. Having been up then, sometimes we’re down now, and vice versa. The jocks who lorded it over are no longer able to win with their physical gifts in the outside world, while the nerds who were not treated well have used their brains to be successful. Or if you’re lucky, you’re both.
To be honest, not everyone attends college reunions because they were not happy in college, for the most part. What if you struggled to fit in, were transferred from another school or were being forced to follow in your parents’ footsteps? What if you were bullied, were not as good as the other smart kids, or were still searching for your place in the sun? This is where the true, undiscovered power of homecomings lies: it can transform those painful memories into lessons for growth, and our classmates can belatedly admit their own insecurities and bestow compliments and reveal their secret admiration for the kids they once looked down on. If that was the mindset coming into a homecoming, I guarantee more and more would feel at home, and more and more would be there year in and year out.
Homecomings are a time of memories. Science has shown that as time passes, the sharp detail of a memory fades away, and what remains is the deep emotion connected with it, which barely loses its color. And we are all thankful for that. Nobody’s complaining. We’re all too busy reminiscing.