Youth Really Is Wasted On The Young - or - 'When Did They Get To Be So Interesting?'

I've been battling an affliction for months now, and it's getting worse, not better. Probably upwards of four or five months ago I first heard the vaguest of rumors, just the distant echoes of drums in the wilderness. There was going to be a reunion. Thirty years ago, I graduated high school.

So what? Personally, I figured there would have been a twenty-five year reunion, but since five years ago I didn't care any more than I did ten or twenty years ago, it's safe to say I wasn't all that miffed about not being able to miss another high school reunion.

The first one (at ten years), I went out of my way to miss. That one I had gotten the info on and couldn't wait to not go to. Ok, I did wait, but just long enough to tsk and cluck at the outrageous price they were charging, plus a cash bar. Feh (and feel free to insert your own cultural stereotype here). My indignation didn't last long, and it was forgotten.

I didn't realize I missed the twentieth anniversary until somewhere near the twenty-fifth anniversary. No invite. No problem. I figured I was much happier then than I was in high school anyways. I had sculpted asocialism into an art form by the mid-nineties.

At any rate, these first Rumblings of Reunion in '06 didn't do much for me either way. Although, in hindsight, I think I did notice the stirrings of a curiosity I didn't recognize. Then, quite by accident (I don't remember what I was initially searching for), I discovered a blog (as a quick digression, this thing isn't a blog so much as it is part musing, part autobiography, part community happening) that was walking me through life in a Chicago grade school in the mid-to-late 1960s. Not just from my generation, but my actual gradeschool. And my actual class. Yikes.

As I read it (and then read it again), I was astounded to learn that I was flooded with fond memories. Although I knew, in theory, that I was much happier in elementary school than in high school (Yes Virginia, there were no junior highs when and where I went to school. We didn't need no steeekin middle school - you went from vaunted 8th grader directly to taunted freshman after a single summer - but I digress again). Anyways, the author of this excellent blog (Jew Eat Yet), Danny Miller, who was one of the organizers of the reunion, was a sort-of acquaintance, in that what social circles we each had sort-of intersected at times. Much like a Haley's Comet sort of thing. I'd even been at his house for a party or two back in the day. I wrote a comment on the blog, basically thanking him for the trip down memory lane, he dropped me a note afterwards, and we each started comparing reminiscences. The quiet, smart kid with the way long hair and baby face who kept messing up the curve in school had turned into a witty, erudite, successful, semi-retired writer and editor. Overnight. Ok, thirty years of overnights.

Got me to thinking. I was now getting really curious about the whatever-happened-to-baby-jane factor of this reunion thing. My mother thought I was nuts ("You haven't seen or heard from these people in thirty years, why now?"), my girlfriend thought I was nuts ("You've never mentioned these people before, why now?"), my cat thought I was nuts ("Quit looking at 'Classmates.com' and feed me, dammit!").

Then, as if this wasn't weird enough yet, another of the organizers of the impending reunion - we had gone to a relatively small high school, so they were organizing a triple-class reunion with the classes of '75, '76, and '77 - dropped me an email on the very day Danny wrote me back. Barb had seen my comment on Danny's blog and wanted to say hi. Barb (a year younger than me) was a closer friend (closer in the context that we actually hung out periodically - I didn't have a lot of friends back then that I saw with much regularity), and when we caught one another up on our lives the past thirty years, saw a bunch of parallels. Someone else that turned out to be a fascinating adult.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the reunion, and to my complete amazement, I agonized over not going. To make the point even more indelibly, Danny sent me a link to another of our classmates' blogs, an expatriate now living in England (as is Barb, by the way). Donna is another of those that I literally spent nine or ten years in classes with, but never ran in the same circles. Her blog is a thoughtful, witty, intimate, and at times heartrending set of writing based mostly about her only son who's a U.S. Marine in Iraq now. And this from a dyed-in-the-wool liberal dove. Regardless of your personal views of American involvement in the middle east, you need to read this one too (Mother Courage). Yet another of the classmates I never got to know in all those years that have wonderful stories to tell. Who knew?

So here I am, eager for more stories, more experiences. I'm suddenly fixating on the next reunion, and I don't do patience very well. This will be an annoying ten years. And I blame you, Danny.