Twenty-five years ago, I wanted to move on more than anything. I had just a few weeks before I graduated high school and looked forward to the next challenge in life.
I can’t say that I had a horrible time in high school. I took part in a number of activities, did well enough in the classroom and have lots of fond memories. But I never really created a solid core of friends.
Most of the time, I hung out on the fringes. I could blame the distance between my home and the school – I commuted from one side of Baltimore to the other – but grade school classmates of mine had no problem finding their place in the social scene.
By the time I got over my fear of getting in trouble, the time had pretty much come to leave for college. So I just had what fun I could, then went off to the wilds of western Pennsylvania to start over.
I’m getting a little nostalgic about all of this because I went to my 25-year high school reunion the other week. Actually, I passed on the formal reunion event for a number of reasons and attended the more casual Happy Hour event with 25 or so guys.
I tried to approach the whole evening without too much anxiety. After all, I could always just stay for a little bit and leave if I didn’t feel comfortable or found that I was the only one in the room who hadn’t stayed in touch with the rest of the class. I am friends with some of the guys on Facebook, but that’s a totally different situation.
The one thought which dominated my mind ever since that night was how silly I was to worry about all the things I worried about in high school.
I won’t use the phrase “time heals all wounds” because I don’t think my status as a loner almost three decades ago really qualifies as a wound. Besides, I had attended two previous reunions and had fun at those events.
The four hours or so I spent with those guys gave me the clarity we all need once in a while. Whether we went to parties together in 1985 or not, we can still find some common ground over beer, pizza and pit beef. Or, in my case pit turkey because I really need to be careful of my fat intake.
I found topics like that more common in conversation that Friday night than old memories of crazy antics. We talked about our kids, our jobs and the sports on the bar’s televisions more than anything else.
With the exception of having some difficulty remembering who was who – the guy with the shaved head really made things difficult – we fell into the same familiar conversations guys in their early 40s probably fall into at most social events.
I have read that younger generations find reunions less important now because of the growth of social media. People don’t just lose touch like they used to. But if you never lose touch, you don’t get a chance to stand around a bar one day 25 years after you graduate and act like nothing has changed. It’s kind of fun.