Reunion chapter 1

Twenty years. TWENTY YEARS! 20 years? Has it really been that long? Well, it actually has. Later this year, my high school class will celebrate our 20 year reunion. It is sinking in slowly and somewhat painfully. Where do I begin? Well first off, I have never been one to care about my age so I am not dwelling on the fact that I am 20 years removed from HS. I also do not have any trepidation about how my former classmates will judge how I look, the car I drive, where I work or any of the other specifics of my life right now. I like my life, I like who I have become and except for some poundage I am happy with the way that I look. So then what is the big deal right? Well, I think it comes down to the fuzzy past. You know what I am talking about, how the memory of how it was 20 years ago is so much better than it actually was. There is so much I have forgotten and so much that I am most likely mis-remembering. I do know that my perspective on things from that time is very different no matter how I remember it. We lamented that we were stuck in a dead end town, that life was passing us by, and that if these were the best years of our lives then we were not all that jazzed about the future. Of course what you can tell an 18 year old and what they will believe are totally different things. While I would not trade all of HS for the two greatest moments of my life (births of my two sons), HS was not nearly as horrible as we thought. The world was simpler either in fact or in perception due to our narrow worldview, and we were under no pressure other than what we brought on ourselves. So, getting back to now and the impending event. I am not sure why I have a few butterflies over this. Maybe it is because on some level, I would like to keep remembering the people I lost touch with as they were back then. That the room will not be filled with old friends, old enemies and old acquaintances, but with strangers who happen to have a 20 year old picture in my yearbook (yearbook - that is a whole other blog altogether). Twenty years. More on this to come.