Well, don't tell anybody, but my own personal reunion was Friday night, and even if we didn't have any of the Saturday events, I would have been completely content because I got to see all the people I most wanted to see.
These included, but were not limited to, two guys who endured calculus class with me. Each went on to engineering-related careers and I was an English major, so you kind of get the picture on who was the most miserable in the class, although PLT joked that he and I were vying to see who would earn the D.
I never really thought of PLT and JET as similar at all, but in talking with them until the wee hours of the morning, I realized that both are the youngest children of their families, with much-older siblings. They are both intellectually curious and very analytical in nature. And both are super cool, which I had suspected long ago and was reminded of yet again.
JET now lives in Tennessee, is married with two kids and is in a position of some authority that makes him -- dare I say this? -- a pillar of the community. This would be in marked contrast to his high school career, which involved throwing up into the bell of a tuba on the band bus (and not because he had the flu). I asked him how much of his high school antics his wife knew, and he said, “Little to none.”
PLT now lives in Idaho, works for a big IT company as a supervisor and in his spare (!) time runs a scuba diving shop. He has traveled all over the world on rafting and diving trips. Right now his major project is building an incredible shop on a beautiful, isolated piece of land. He is the author of this wonderful insight, reason #1 in a list of why he is on my most-admired list.
Why, of all the people from high school, did I want to see those two the most? After 20 years I still remember certain kindnesses they showed to me. And they were never boring or predictable.
They also went to a different high school than I went to, a fact that was confirmed in conversations throughout the weekend. I forgot how so many people can spend time in the same place but have distinctly different experiences. That’s not a bad thing, but I had just forgotten it.
The “official” reunion went well overall, I think. We had about 85 people at the dinner, 50 of whom were classmates. To be honest, I wish we’d had a group more racially representative of our mixed class. Maybe we’ll accomplish that at the 25th. Anyway, we had a family picnic at a local park on Saturday – with the most incredible, mild weather – and a dinner at a downtown banquet hall that night. People seemed to blend well and a fairly sizable group went out to a neighborhood bar after the formal event and closed it down. I was delighted that they chose the neighborhood place rather than some blaring, 20something downtown spot. Yes, I am old. And I wanted to talk to people, not shout at them.
One of them told me that she had found her place, her niche. Isn’t that what everybody hopes for? One woman told me she hated her job, so she quit, went back to school in a completely different field and now loves her life. (I think she had been watching a lot of Oprah.) One guy, who was voted class clown, now lives on a farm in Wisconsin and runs a successful medical practice (ob-gyn, it should be noted).
I really enjoyed talking to people I didn’t know well in high school – perhaps even more than talking to people I knew well. Because how well did I really know them, and what does it matter now? Yes, mapgirl has become quite reflective in the wake of the 20th high school reunion, and maybe part of it was standing in the back of the room (my peculiar vantage point) and considering the many roads each person has taken over the last two decades.
At one point I watched a group of people talking, and I realized that one couple has lost a child; one couple has adopted a child; one couple has a Down syndrome child, and the fourth couple has a child only after two miscarriages and a difficult (and I mean inject-yourself-in-the-stomach-and-spend-the-last-trimester-in-bed difficult) pregnancy. What other patterns were in that room, triumphs and turmoils and interesting stories? More than I could process in one night, I’m sure.
So we came down to the end of it, and LHR and I sat upstairs in my parents’ house for the post-game wrap-up. She declared that the women in our class have aged more gracefully than the men, and I think the pictures will back her up on that. We compared notes on various people and their clothes, raided the kitchen for late night treats -- pretty much the whole high school slumber party experience. But it was 4 a.m. and I was really tuckered out.
On the drive back to Nashville the next day, I had to resort to almost every trick I knew to stay awake. The stretch from Mount Vernon, Illinois, to Paducah, Kentucky, was particularly tough. I sang all of Springsteen’s “The River.” It’s a double album and quite effective, with the exception of “Drive All Night” (a song I love, but it’s about 8 minutes long with a very slow tempo). I drank about two liters of water and didn’t stop until I absolutely had to. I rolled down all the windows. I recited poetry out loud. At one point, I had to get out and walk for a while, which helped immensely.
I have never been so happy to see the Nashville city limits. And very happy I made the trip back to Peoria. I should be fully recovered in time for the 25th.
