I received a postcard in the mail inviting me to Las Vegas in November for the 39th reunion of my Hilo High School class.

My wife, Maggie, who graduated from Hilo High the same year, was puzzled.

"Why a 39th reunion?" she asked. "Why didn't they just wait until the 40th year?"

"I don't know," I said. "Because it's Hilo? Maybe they're doing a practice run. You should just be grateful that they invited you, too."

I took more than a little satisfaction that her name, spelled wrong, was scribbled as an afterthought on the invitation next to my printed name.

She was way more popular than I was back in high school; it's about time I get my turn to be the favored one.

Actually, which of us gets preferential treatment for reunions has been a hit-or-miss proposition over the years.

For previous gatherings, it alternated between one of us being invited and the other being listed at the bottom of the letter among long-lost classmates who could not be located.

That's so Hilo. We've only been married since two years after we graduated.

It came as no surprise to me that we were having a reunion in the 39th year; our class was never the swiftest at arithmetic.

I was once asked to say a few words at a statewide Math Bowl co-sponsored by my newspaper. Beforehand, I was introduced to the team from my old alma mater.

"Oh," I said, "I didn't realize they had started teaching math at Hilo High."

Of course, my little attempt at levity amused nobody but myself. I'd forgotten how sensitive we Hiloans can be. I wish I'd had the 39th reunion invitation to rest my case on.

The most intriguing thing about this reunion invitation was the dining plan.

The main night featured the mondo dinner buffet at the Main Street Station, followed by a reception upstairs from the beef jerky shop next to the Fremont Hotel — "with heavy pupus."

That's so Hilo, to follow food with more food.

Our class always knew how to chow down. The popular modern concept of super-sizing meals was sort of invented at Hilo High during our tenure there.

The standard 25-cent cafeteria plate wasn't enough for some of us, so they started offering an option where for 50 cents they'd forget the plate and just fill the whole tray with food — with two cartons of milk to wash it down.

I seldom ate in the cafeteria myself after I conned my dad into writing me a note saying the school food made me sick so I had to leave campus for lunch.

It really had nothing to do with lunch, but with getting off campus to smoke.

I couldn't smoke in the bathrooms like everybody else because that was where the Pirates and Wreckers who lived to beef with haoles hung out.

(All you kids out there, this was before the surgeon general's report came out telling us how dangerous it was to smoke. I have since quit and sincerely hope the Pirates and Wreckers have done the same.)

I always felt guilty about my lunchtime ruse because Mrs. Leithead, who ran the cafeteria, was a very nice lady and I was friends with her kids.

She was forever after me to explain why, if I found her food so inedible, I always ordered the super-sized tray on the days I did eat my lunch on campus.

I wonder why Mrs. Leithead never thought of opening the cafeteria after lunch for heavy pupus.

It's not like we would have been late to math class.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.