Reelin in the years

Over the past year, my attitude towards my 10 year high school reunion has covered the full spectrum of emotions. At first I was super excited for this event. 10 years! Getting to see people again, relive the old days, show off my new wife, etc. Then I realized I'd gained 50 pounds since high school, and I wasn't so enthused anymore. No problem, I had a whole year to work off the weight. Well, that never happened. Then I started thinking, you know, I haven't seen or talked to any of these people in 10 years anyways, why would I want to see them now? Now I was really not that interested in going. So what happened next?




I agreed to help organize the reunion. Why? Because when it comes down to it, I like the idea of identifying with a group of people. We all shared this same experience, we should acknowledge that. We were the first graduating class ever from Wilsonville High School, doesn't that count for something in this world? Don't we have an obligation to set the standard for future reunions of future classes?



The answer to this is of course "Andy, you're thinking way too highly of yourself and your mind is so warped that you actually believe someone other than you cares at all about you being the inaugural class."

Nonetheless, I still thought it'd be pretty dumb if we didn't have a reunion.

Planning this reunion, we faced many challenges, the biggest of which is that we had no money to start with. Another hurdle was generating excitement in the event itself. Being that we were the first graduating class, we ended up having a whole mish-mash of people who basically only went to school together for a couple of years. It wasn't like we were going home to see the people we grew up with and went to school with for 12 years.

However, the reunion turned out be quite fun, at least for me. Judging from what I saw, most people seemed to have a generally good time. There were a few people it took me a while to recognize, but pretty much everyone looked the same. We talked about old teachers, what we'd been up to, the typical reunion talk. Whenever the conversation started waning, someone would inevitably say "can you believe it's been 10 years?" to which we'd all predictably reply "nope." And, of course, there was the one guy who drank a little too much and got a little too loose lipped. My favorite quote of his was "I tried out for the Navy SEALs, but apparently they don't take felons." I repeated this, making sure I heard him right, and he replied "I don't want to get into it."

Good enough for me.