More Reunion Musings

My 35th High School Reunion was a couple weeks ago. As the weeks since have passed, I've found myself thinking about it often. It was so wonderful seeing the slightly older, but still very familiar faces. Many of them were in school with me for 12 years. Hard to not have these faces etched into my memory forever.

There is a story, that I've been wanting to share for a long time. It involves a couple guys from junior high and I think I need to tell it. I hope my words do it justice.

I had a wonderful, slow childhood. Summers lasted forever and I lived in a world where I didn't have to grow up too soon. I was able to stay a child for a pretty long time. It helped that one of my best friends was my younger brother Jeff.

One Saturday afternoon during 7th grade, I was across the street playing with the neighbor kids and Jeff. We were playing war. What made this particularly fun was the neighbor's had some very cool old rifles. Heck, they might have been real...with all the firing mechanisms removed. I don't really know, but they had a real feeling about them. I was standing by the tree in the middle of their yard, just getting a good bead on my brother, when out of the corner of my eye I see Danny and Bob riding by on their bikes.

Danny and Bob are like the two coolest guys in my class. They are never over in my area of town. What are they doing here? I freeze in sheer panic and drop my rifle to the ground. I do the very casual head nod and say "hi". They ride by.

Please, dear God. Let them not see me with that rifle. My life will be so over if they did.

Monday morning comes and I head to school with my heart in my throat. What happens if I walk in and everyone is laughing and calling me "Annie Oakley" or worse...."rifle girl" (we weren't the most original group).

As I go into homeroom, I see Danny. He doesn't even look at me. So far, so good. At lunch I see Bob. He doesn't look at me either. The whole day goes by and nothing happens. The relief is overwhelming. I don't think I am going to be the laughing stock of the entire school.

It was at that very moment, that I decided Danny and Bob really were the two coolest guys in our class.

Years go swirling by and here I am 30 years later standing at my reunion talking with Dan (he's a 53 year old guy...I can't call him Danny anymore). For some unknown reason (maybe the wine), this story pops into my head. And before I know it, I"m telling it to Dan. Fortunately, he seems to enjoy the tale and doesn't remember a thing about that day.

Odd, how a moment that seems so potentially devastating and overwhelming at the time...ends up being just a very funny memory.

Tripping Down Memory Lane

Tonight is my High School Reunion. It's been 35 years, which seems impossible. How in the world could that much time have passed? It seems like only a short time ago I was an awkward teen-ager stumbling around in ridiculous platform shoes and bell bottoms. (That could have been last Tuesday too!)

This is a picture of the school...doesn't it look more like a prison then a high school?

I went to a small Catholic School in Dearborn, Michigan. It closed one year after we graduated, which I always felt was a great loss. Not only for all the kids that weren't able to graduate from there, but also for us.

You see, we have no annual Homecoming Game to go to anymore and nothing feels like football more than a crisp fall Sunday afternoon. (Yes, we always played our football games on Sundays. Seems rather contradictory as it's the Sabbath and all, but when you don't have your own football field and you have to borrow the Public School field....you take what they give you and they always gave us Sundays.) Still to this day, I love high school football games. Although, those lame things they call floats, have nothing on what we accomplished.

I've been a big instigator in this whole reunion. Which makes me not only excited to see my old friends, but also a bit nervous as I hope the caterer does a good job and there's enough decorations. You know it's been a long time since I've hung crepe paper. (Just kidding...no crepe paper, although now that I think of it that would be pretty funny). Just stressing some of the details even though I know, no one will care. I guess that's just the organizer in me.

There have been some great aspects of planning this reunion already. First, I started a blog in support of our class and the reunion. I had been wanting to start blogging earlier this year and used the reunion as an opportunity to test drive one. (I used Word Press for my Reunion Blog.) If you want to go stop by and check it out feel free. Here's the link. Creating this first blog, gave me the courage to start up Our Mush Push, which has been one of my favorite things this year.

Second, it's been fun to be a part of people reconnecting. For example...Mike and Ray lost touch a few years after graduation and now they are emailing and planning on a reunion of their own. That just feels good.

In addition, some of the email exchanges have been great. My current favorite was one written by Dan to Ray and Roland, where he never referred to them by name but by numbers. They all still go by their football numbers. Hysterical or what. The male mind is fascinating. I don't understand it... but it's still fascinating.

Hopefully, the next post will be about the great success of the event and not my complete failure as an event planner.

Also just realized the title of this post might imply something a little more 70's than I meant. It literally refers to my hope of not trip over my own feet.