High School Reunion

My 30th is coming up next year and I'm trying to get the wheels in motion to get something organized. So as I do google searches, send emails and make phone calls, I have to answer the question "Why would anyone want to go?"

That's the question, isn't it? Why go? For me, I have more good memories than bad but for many, High School was traumatic. And it was for as many reasons as there are people.

I came from a small school and there were only about 60 of us collected together, 5 days/week, 8 hours/day. Most of us didn't choose each other. We were thrown together based on where our parents lived. Teens seldom have much of an idea of who they are or how to relate to people. We ran on a mix of instinct and hormones while being put under pressure to learn Math and English and History. There were pressures of sports and pressures of dating and pressures at home and the biggest pressure of just trying to "fit in." That's quite a mix. It's going to be difficult. Can you hold somebody accountable for that? Blame them for it?

We all made our share of poor decisions that were in hindsight clearly "mistakes". We'd love to have a "do-over." Many of those mistakes were the sort you can't see. Some of those poor decisions hurt somebody. I doubt anyone makes it through school without getting hurt or hurting someone else.

So why would we want to revisit any of that?

Because the most incredible thing happened to us in those four years. We all hatched together. We got wrenched from childhood into a fairly hostile adolescence and then spit out towards as the adults we are today. The only people on this planet who were witnesses are your fellow classmates. The kids we went to school with were there when it was all happening. They were there when we were trying to figure out how to be a person in the world.

And every one of your classmates has a story. Aren't you curious about how those stories go? Haven't you seen the movies that wraps up the characters lives during the credits and wish you could get a wrap up of the characters in your life? It's so rare that we get a chance to find out what happened in real life and a reunion is a chance to get a bit of that perspective.

I'm not interested in judging anybody. Whether you were a missionary, a junkie, a soldier, a teacher, a mother, or a bum, or whether you have 10 kids or 3 marriages, I'm just curious about how you got there. If you are homeless or hopeless, I want to hear what happened. If you are a billionaire with a yacht and an island, I want to know your story. (and be your best friend!)

After 30 years, with sore knees, gray hair, fading eyesight, noisy joints, high cholestral, and surrounded by kids and co-workers who don't know us any other way, its good to be with people who remember when we were young. Who remember when we were walking, breathing sacks of dreams and potential.

And our memories, our past, is something worth keeping, in any form it takes, if for nothing else to help us to see who we are now.