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At My 60th College Reunion, I Saw My Life on Parade
Watching alumni from their 20s to their 90s march in a reunion procession allowed me a moment to reflect on my past, present and future
2-minute read
From memories of youth to thoughts of longevity, a 60th college reunion prompted the author to take stock of his life.
Lily Qian
I watched my life go by in reverse. On a late spring weekend, I attended my college reunion, a beer-soaked (and, this year, rain-soaked) extravaganza that drew several thousand alumni back to campus wearing every conceivable combination of our school colors, orange and black. As in years past, bands played, deans gave long-winded speeches and parties ran into the wee hours.
But the main event at a Princeton reunion is the Saturday afternoon parade — it’s called the “P-rade” — when we all line up with our classmates and march the length of the campus.
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The P-rade is organized by class year. The 25th reunion — this year, the class of ’01 — goes first. Then the classes march by in chronological order, starting with the oldest. All the following classes gather along the side of the winding parade route and wait their turn to step in. After the class of 1953 goes by, the grads from 1954 join the march, and so on — all the way down to the end of the parade route, where the rowdy, boisterous graduating seniors, just about to become the newest alumni, spend hours cheering (and drinking) as the older classes pass by.
As I stood there with my college classmates — the great class of 1966, back for our 60th reunion — watching this procession from the old to the young, I realized that I was observing the stages of my own life in reverse order.
When the alums from the classes of the 1950s went by — some walking, many riding golf carts — I saw what I will look like if I make it into my 90s. Next came the classes nearer my own. One guy from ’63 carried a sign, shaped like a pain pill, that read “My joints hurt — no bones about it.” Yeah, I thought, that’s my life today. And then, as we ’66ers stepped in and walked down the parade route past all the younger classes, I saw reasonable facsimiles of myself in my 70s (the class of ’76), 50s (class of ’91) and 30s (class of ’16). Finally, when we passed the noisy crowd from ’26, I recalled my time as a carefree 22-year-old who had just finished his last college exams.
Author T.R. Reid and Sachiko Nakahira share a moment in front of the Class of ‘66 banner at the start of the Princeton reunion parade.
Penelope Reid/Courtesy T.R. Reid
After the parade, our 60th-reunion group gathered for a class picture. The photographer said his view of one person was blocked, so he asked “that man with white hair” to move. We all laughed; “that man” could have been any one of us. In our 80s, we all look pretty much alike.
Having just watched the various stages of their own lives in that parade, the guys from ’66 got to thinking about which era was the best of all.
Sixty years ago, when we graduated, the school was all-male, nearly all-white and all-American. Today’s classes have men and women, white and Black students and various shades in between, and students from dozens of countries — a definite improvement, we agreed.
And the opportunities for this year’s grads seem broader than ours were. When we got out of college in 1966, the mandatory military draft sharply curtailed the choices for male grads. In my case, after working on the student newspaper, I was burning to become a journalist. But first I had to put in five years in the U.S. Navy. The class of ’26 gets to choose whether or not to join the military.
On the other hand, we were more optimistic about our country’s prospects in 1966 than we are today.
When our class officers ran a survey this spring, only 24 percent of us thought our children and grandchildren would lead a better life than we did. Back in 1966, at least we didn’t have to worry about AI replacing humans on the job.
And yet, when I was chatting with those lively, spunky graduating seniors, they didn’t sound a bit worried about the world they were entering. Their attitude was: AI? Bring it on! We can handle it.
Back home, as I packed away my orange-and-black reunion blazer, I realized that I was comfortable in my current status: an ancient alum in his ninth decade.
But after seeing the energy, the ambition, the sheer optimism of the class of ’26, I found myself inspired by these new grads who had learned so much already — and who had so much more to learn.
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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