Illustration by Dennis Auth
I recently attended my 50th high school reunion. A half century! It’s 600 months – 219,000 days. I’m not going to compute the hours and minutes because it’s just too depressing.
A lot of water has gone under our bridges since we got our diplomas. A partial list of what we have seen includes: Watergate, disco, the oil crisis, Rodney King, MTV, Mount St. Helens, the fall of the Berlin Wall, AIDS, the internet, mobile phones, the Challenger disaster, 9/11, “The Simpsons,” the Rover landing on Mars, and social media. Not to mention 10 presidents. And the general consensus of everyone was, “Boy, that happened fast.” Believe me, Millennials, it did. It will for you, too.
When I walked up to a group of my classmates for the first time, my initial thought was, “Who are these old people?” There were more wrinkles than an old linen suit. Upon closer examination, I began to recognize some of these codgers as my high school friends. Then it hit me: I’m a codger, too.
Some of my classmates had aged well. And that’s between them and their plastic surgeon. However, others looked like they had gone one too many rounds with Father Time. All I can say is, “Thank goodness for name tags.”
After a few hours, I came to a realization about time: It takes something away from us, but it also gives something back. There’s no doubt time steals our youth. No matter how good anyone looked, how much anyone exercised, or how healthy they ate, everyone at the reunion is about 70. You can say “70 is the new 50” all you want. Seventy is still old.
However, age is a great equalizer. I couldn’t help but notice how the passage of time had eliminated the cliques that existed in our high school. At the reunion, all the groups like jocks, nerds, thugs and brainiacs were gone. Time had somehow evened things out between us. We had become part of one collective.
It was great fun to reconnect with people I haven’t seen since the Nixon administration. All afternoon, we talked about children, careers, and life experiences. And our health. When we were teenagers, about the only medical conditions that concerned us were pimples and jock itch. Now, it’s hearing aids, knee replacements, high blood pressure, reflux, incontinence and CPAP machines.
The writer Rick Bragg once said that “nostalgia sells.” He’s right. It seems that everyone at the reunion was fondly telling and retelling stories from those formative years so long ago.
Immaturity also sells. I heard a story about shooting Roman candles out of a hotel window on a field trip. Dan and Dale recalled pulling in front of a bowling alley and mooning the patrons. Most of us rolled yards with toilet paper and egged houses on Halloween. My old pal Mickey reminded me of the time he dressed up as cheerleader and freaked out a teacher by sitting in an un-ladylike position. I think it would’ve freaked me out too. I would like to point out that everyone I just mentioned are now productive, successful citizens.
I began making a final pass through my classmates when I saw someone I missed – Darlene. We stopped, hugged and lied about how good each of us looked. She was the liar, by the way. I thought she looked just fine.
Only a few minutes had passed when I said, “I always think about Randy when I think of you.” Randy was a beloved classmate who left us much too soon.
“I can’t think of him without crying,” she sobbed. “When Randy died, it was as bad as losing my mother.”
I responded, “We all miss him. He was a great guy.”
She nodded. “When we moved down here, Randy was the first person to reach out to me. He accepted me. He made me feel like I was part of the group.”
And then she cried some more.
I pulled her close and gently patted her back. No more words were necessary.
It was the perfect ending to a memorable afternoon. In a few short hours, I had revisited some of the most formative years of my life. I reconnected with old friends. I laughed at their stories, and I cried at their losses. And like everything else in life, it truly went by too fast.
Ferris Bueller was right.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.
Joe Hobby is a standup comedian, a syndicated columnist, and a long-time writer for Jay Leno. He’s a member of Cullman Electric Cooperative and is very happy now that he can use Sprout from his little place on Smith Lake. Contact him at [email protected].
