Reunions

The rain was somewhat torrential this morning, leaving TigerBlog to think that Class Day would be moved into Jadwin Gym.

Apparently he's not the only one who thought that was, as the lobby became a gathering point for men in suits and ties and women in dresses. Sadly for them and their nice shoes, the event was kept outside.

The featured speaker was Steve Carell, the usually funny actor who has many more hits than whiffs in his career, most notably on "The Office" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

TB was a big fan of "The Office" during its glory days, and Carell was as funny on that show as anyone has ever been on any show. TB has completely lost track of the plot and everything else, going back to maybe Carell's last season on the show.

Every now and then he'll watch some reruns, especially when the great early episodes are on.

This weekend, he had a choice between the one where Carell falls into the Koi pond, which he passed on when he saw that PBS was showing the 25th anniversary edition of "The Phantom of the Opera."

If you're a Phantom fan, the 25th anniversary show, filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, is not to be missed.

Basically, it's the stage version of the show that ends with a reunion on almost everyone who played the Phantom and Sarah Brightman, the original Christine.

TigerBlog remembers when he first saw the show, how he wondered how one person's mind could have come up with something so complex, sort of like when he first read "A Prayer For Owen Meany."

For the 25th anniversary show, he watched as the Phantom and Christine sing "Phantom of the Opera," followed up immediately by the Phantom's powerful "Music of the Night," and was mesmerized by how great the two performers were.

He had seen the 25th anniversary show once before, with the reunion scene at the end. He didn't see that this time, though he did catch "All I Ask Of You" and "Point of No Return," two of the show's more famous songs.

A few days earlier, TB saw for the first time a movie he'd always wanted to see - "It Happened One Night."

The 1934 classic, staring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, is littered with Hall-of-Fame scenes, especially when Gable shows Colbert how to hitchhike and Colbert turns the tables on him.

It wasn't too hard to figure out what direction the movie was going in or how it would end, but that didn't make it any less great. With all the movies TB has seen through the years, he's not sure how "It Happened One Night" slipped the cracks as long as it did.

Anyway, this weekend at Princeton, words and phrases like "25th anniversary" and "1934" and especially "reunions" didn't apply to anything other than the annual gathering that occurs on this campus the Thursday, Friday and Saturday prior to Class Day on Monday and then ultimately graduation on Tuesday.

TB isn't sure how old the oldest person to participate in the P-Rade was, though he figures it was someone who saw "It Happened One Night" in the movies when it first came out.

He's not sure what percentage of alums show up for Reunions each year, but he knows that it's north of 50% for the 25th, in this case those who graduated when Phantom was opening.

As for the Reunions themselves, TB likes to say hi to some familiar faces, likes to check out the alumni basketball games for a few minutes. He loves the P-Rade, and he likes to see all of the kids who are here with their parents.

Mostly, he comes away with an appreciation of how unique Princeton is in this regard, in the world of alumni loyalty.

He's not talking about money.

He's talking about love for the institution itself.

TB went to Penn, and he has very fond memories of his time there. He made good friends, some of whom he talks to somewhat weekly to this day.

It's just that there isn't the affection for Penn that exists here for Princeton. Maybe it's more unique to varsity athletes, who represent their school against other schools, but TB senses it's way more than that here.

From the time that freshman step onto this campus, they are welcomed into the Princeton family, and it builds from that moment.

From that first day, freshman are "branded," as it were, as members of their class. This never happened to TB at Penn.

TB was in a meeting Friday morning with several alums, and in the course of three hours, he heard people referred to by their class years and heard the word "classmate" dozens of times.

These are not terms that are used at Penn, or, TB suspects, many other schools.

In the end, this school loyalty never leaves those who are fortunate enough to be part of it.

If you're a Princetonian who doesn't know any different, maybe you don't have a sense of how unique that is, how special that is.

If you grew up a Quaker and then converted to Tigerism, you have a better sense.