thirty years can give you such a crick in the neck!
Has it been that long? Most days I don’t feel as old as I must be to have a 30-year high school reunion coming up in a month. But if I’m being honest, the other days I feel considerably older. So, I guess it all balances out.
Three decades ago I was one of a few hundred kids who assembled at the Kenan Center in Lockport, New York for our graduation ceremony. Let me pause for a minute to reminisce about the Kenan Center…
… Ah, that’s better. More on that another time. For now, let’s get back to the LSHS Class of 1988.
If memory serves (I know someone probably has the actual numbers… Scott?), we started with at least a hundred more than we finished with, earning us the dubious honor of being the worst class (academically and behaviorally) to ever pass through Lockport Senior High School. At least that’s what the guidance counselors told us every year. Truth be told, we had some astonishingly smart people in our class. People who would have given young Mitch Taylor or Chris Knight a run for their money. Maybe even a Lazlo Hollyfeld. But we also had an army of John Benders.
1988 me would have scoffed at the notion of being called a kid. I was 18. A grown-ass adult with a voter ID card and a driver’s license. I was about to leave all the bullshit of high school behind. I had a mullet and a pretty rockin’ fake ID. I was no kid. I was full-on ready for life at high speed.
But those days are long gone and I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m glad. I don’t miss high school. I miss people. And not just the people I spent most of my time with from 1984-1988. I miss all the characters that played a role in that part of my life. Of our lives. I mean every person we graduated with, the ones that moved away before graduation, and the ones that got fed up with school and defiantly flipped off the man by dropping out in the spring of our senior year.
I realized that for the first time at the 10-year reunion. I saw people I hadn’t seen since that day at the Kenan Center. Some, even before then. I drank with them, talked to them, and learned about their lives. Their kids. Everything that makes them real live grown-up people. Old friendships came back… even if just for a night.
…time is a river, flowing into nowhere.
We must live while we can
and we’ll drink our cup of laughter.
“The Finer Things,” –Steve Winwood
Sorry prom committee, but Kevin O’Shea had it right. This song should’ve been our prom theme.
Moving on, my favorite part of that reunion was what didn’t come up—high school. If we rehashed any old memories I honestly don’t remember them. Because no matter who we were or thought we were in high school, we all got the same chance to reinvent ourselves in the next chapter. And the chapter after that. And very few of us—if any—decided the 1988 version of ourselves was spot on and clung to it into adulthood.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of the stupid shit we got away with back then is fun to think about, but only for a minute. Like the time Julie had to be our designated driver because she was the only one sober enough to get behind the wheel.
But it quickly gets alarming when we realize that many of us now have kids who are doing the same things or worse. So, we take a deep breath and thank our lucky stars that we survived high school. Then we quickly change the subject to today because when we stop to think about it, high school wasn’t even practice for real life. When I look back, I think high school was really a collection of hundreds of kids trying on different personas because they hadn’t yet been introduced to themselves.
This seems like an appropriate place for one of my favorite quotes and a shout-out to Sam Bertino (rest his soul) – one of my favorite teachers who also introduced me to the source of these words:
What lies behind us and before us are small matters
compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I didn’t go to our 20-year reunion because I’m stupid. I got it in my head that reunions are like wedding anniversaries. I thought missing the 20 was no big deal because we’d hit 25—the big one. But apparently you only have high school reunions every 10 years and 25 is nothing more than halfway between 20 and 30. Ick, math. Oh I saw pictures. Make no mistake, though—I don’t wish I was in the pictures. I just wish I had been able to talk to the people who were in them.
That said, I will readily admit that I’m squarely on the fence for our 30-year reunion. I don’t mind telling you it feels a little pointy (not the good kind of pointy). But it isn’t because I don’t want to see my former classmates. I’m certain I do. I know there will be at least a handful and maybe more—people I didn’t necessarily expect to see but ended up thrilled I saw. And I’m equally certain that there will be some people I wish I saw who decided to not make the trip.
It’s just that the reunion has turned into a thing. It’s happy hour on Friday. Reunion proper on Saturday. And something else I just don’t remember on Sunday. I know I’m going to the happy hour because it’s at NY Beer Project and I like beer. I know I’m not participating in the Sunday portion because I can’t remember what or where it is, and because I have to head back to Tennessee early that morning.
It’s the part in the middle—the pointiest of the points—that has me undecided. As of right now I have no earthly idea if I’ll go on Saturday. But I’m kind of excited because I know many of my classmates also like beer. Or at least they did. So there’s a reasonable chance I’ll see them Friday. If the reunion organizers could arrange for at least one guidance counselor to show up on Saturday to chastise us for old time’s sake, I think it just might be enough to put me in the “yes” camp. What do you say, Todd? Can you make it happen?
So time be a river rolling into nowhere.
I will live while I can.
I will have my ever after.
(see… it just fits).
Cheers!
