50th High School Reunion

To go, or not to go.....

My 50^th high school reunion is coming up in a couple of weeks and that astonishes me. I have difficulty wrapping my head around the reality that it’s been that long since I graduated. I also never could have imagined how much I’d like to be there, and to see what has become of all my old classmates, at least the ones that are still extant. If someone had told me fifty years ago that I was going to feel this way about revisiting anything about my high school years, I would have thought them fools.

My high school days were largely unhappy, and I suspect that’s something I would find more common to many of us than I would have imagined when I was seventeen. I felt very much alone in that struggle. When I think about it objectively, I believe that the natural chemical imbalances associated with teenage hormones, the angst with garnering the acceptance of my peers (and even myself, to be honest), and more than a little bit of recreational (mostly) drug abuse all contributed to my inability to be comfortable in my own skin during that awkward age. I am certain that without the unconditional love of my parents and what must have been an overworked and underpaid guardian angel, I would not be here today to celebrate being extant as well.

Over the years, I’ve said many times that everything of any real significance in my life occurred after high school, although the practical side of me understands that this is not completely true. But there were a few pivotal events that occurred well after graduation, that helped me put those miserable days behind me and become at least something akin to the person I always hoped to be. One was being admitted to graduate school and working toward my Master’s degree in geology. For the first time in my life, I came to appreciate the true value of knowledge, and along with that I found an engaging and challenging career path. And I met Jill as part of that liberating graduate school experience, and she would become my life-long love and my wife of more than forty years. It feels like I’ve been riding the wind ever since. Of course, as in every life, there have been challenges and setbacks, plenty of them, but I think I discovered the secret to happiness - with a little help from my friends - and the heartbreak and loneliness I experienced in high school haunt me no more.

And as those unhappy teenage days faded further into the past, I had the good fortune of beginning to develop relationships with some of my former classmates. A few of them were college contemporaries, and one of those even became the Best Man in my wedding. My high school was fairly large, with an active group of alumni that organized reunions for 10 years, 15 years, and 25 years, but various constraints associated with my career and becoming a parent kept me from generating much interest in those gatherings. I can’t deny that at least part of that reticence was the unhappy memories of high school.

Somewhere in the interim, I became familiar with social media, which has been both a blessing and a curse in my life. I think most of you understand. Through a limited number of old high school friends that had also discovered the platform, I became part of what you might call a fairly large community of high school classmates, and began to discover them in an entirely different context. I witnessed how much we’d all evolved beyond those angst-ridden teenagers we’d been all those years ago. Admittedly, some were still clinging to those high school ‘salad days’ more than what seemed healthy to me, but mostly we’d all grown into productive citizens of the world, each with an interesting story to tell. It is a realization that has been nothing short of cathartic for me.

One of the great things about becoming part of that high school community is that it motivated me to be part of subsequent reunions. I went back to Oklahoma to attend my 40-year reunion, and then my 45^th. They were both wonderful experiences that allowed me to rekindle a few relationships that dated all the way back to high school, and some that had developed only over the past few years. And if I’m to be perfectly honest, one of the most rewarding things about attending those reunions was finding that classmates I’d once held such reverence for, those that by all accounts were the cream of the crop at my high school, had turned out to be rather, well, ordinary people. I’d become their peer, and before those reunions I’d never had a clue. If only I’d known way back then what I do now.

I can put my transformation into perspective with what I consider to be a noteworthy anecdote. My 45th reunion was timed to coincide with Homecoming Weekend. One of the activities associated with it was a pep talk to the current football team by one of the most significant football stars from my class. He received numerous city and state awards back in the day, and went on to have an outstanding college football career. He was without a doubt one of the most popular and admired people in our class. Very simply, he was everything I wasn’t.

Anyway, as part of his talk to what was a pretty rag-tag and struggling football team, which had become one of the sorriest sports programs in Tulsa, our former all-star classmate said to those kids that they needed to embrace everything around them because, as he put it, these are going to be the best days of their lives. I cringed when he said it, and although that may well have been true for him (I don’t think so), my silent prayer in the moment was, “Please, God, don’t let that be so.” My hope for those young men was that the best days of their lives were still ahead, beyond football and beyond high school, and that their lives would be defined by greatness yet to come.

I guess my message to those young men would have been somewhat different because, of course, my perspective on the challenges of my high school years was quite different. As did our former football star, I would have told them to embrace their experience, and to make of it the best they possibly could. But I would have added that the struggles of their youth are only temporary, and that time and maturity will provide them with the tools necessary to keep those struggles in perspective and to face the challenges ahead. I would have told them that they will likely find that their best days, and all the meaningful events in life, are well beyond high school, and to celebrate that it isn’t the other way around.

As it turns out, I won’t get to attend that 50^th reunion after all, due to Jill’s health issues. I’m disappointed, but not because it’s an opportunity to demonstrate to my old classmates that I turned out OK. It is to reinforce with myself that I did.