At 30 or 40, a gathering of my old classmates would have been exactly the kind of thing...

[first lines] Nathan Zuckerman:
[narrating as WWII era dance music plays]
Let's remember the energy. America had won the war. The depression was over. Sacrifice was over. The upsurge of life was contagious. We celebrated a moment of collective inebriation that we would never know again. Nothing like it in all the years that followed from our childhood until tonight, the 45th reunion of our high school class. Nathan Zuckerman:
[now walking down a school hallway]
At 30 or 40, a gathering of my old classmates would have been exactly the kind of thing I'd have kept my nose out of. But at 62, I found myself drawn to it as if in the crowd of half-remembered faces I'd be closer to the mystery at the heart of things, a magic trick that turned time past into time present