Class Reunion

Literature, movies, and water-cooler chat often paint the picture of class reunions as being stodgy, show-offy affairs.

I’m proud to say my class reunion was anything but a stodgy affair. In fact, one of the biggest Baptists brought two kegs of beer! I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun with people from my hometown – it was certainly better than high school!

The vision of 20+ years is amazing.

One conversation I had with some of my classmates centered on the idea that almost all of us went to school together from first grade until graduation. I was looking back over the class list and realized that over 60 of the 93 graduates of my class had been in school together since the elementary years. We were not classmates and friends; we were brothers and sisters.

In the moment of growing up in that small community, I had never considered that idea.

Twenty-two years later it seemed very real. There were classmates I rarely talked to. I could talk to any of them at any time; I just didn’t. I liked everyone I went to school with; I just liked some more. I could hang out with any of them most any time; I just hung out with some more.

For all the times I bash growing up in a small town, the older I get, the more I see just how great it was. I could name every single classmate I had. In the schools I work with today, students couldn’t pick their classmates out of a photo lineup.

We on the other hand, knew what everyone did, or didn’t do on Saturday night.

I guess that was kind of like brothers and sisters.

Of course…I was mostly happy because I could still go in skinny-boy-low-rise jeans because I weigh 8 pounds less than I did when I graduated twenty-two years ago!