Going Home, Coming Home

I HAVE DECIDED,after due deliberation over the past couple of years, to attend my 50 year high school class reunion. I haven't missed one yet, so, why not pitch a complete game? What I noticed is that I enjoyed the ten year and the twenty year reunions enormously,then, my interest began to taper off a bit more at each succesive one. Profound, fundamental changes occur in a person's life between the ages fo eighteen and twenty eight, and even twenty eight and thirty eight. After that, less and less. This time I will find out whats been hap'nin to my classmates between the ages of fifty eight and sixty eight, yawn. Essentally the grandchildren are ten years older. Still worth attending, if barely. I'll be there Friday night. Saturday,I'm going to a college football game and grad school reunion. Our American fascination with high school class reunions is fasinating sociologically and psychologically. A case in point am I. I graduated in a class of 210. Of them,about five to ten of them were my close friends, good friends maybe ten or twenty, and I knew on a speaking basis in the hall ways about a hundred or so. The other half I either have nerver heard of, nor ever spoken to, to this day. I was a friendly, funny, smart, popular kid. I'm guessing that most of my classmates share the same situation, whether or not they would acknowledge it now. It is estimated that close to sixy classmates will be in attendance for the weekend. Two or three dozen of them, or maybe more, have died. Friday night at the mixer,my only appearance, I'm guessing that those I have never spoken to I will not speak to, not because of lack of interest or hatred but for the same reason we failed to conncet in high school; we were and will still be busy connecting with and spending time with other people, our close friends. I'm thinking about walking up to a few of the ones to whom I've never spoken, and speaking. I plan to mention to them that I am speaking to them now because never before, in high school or after, have I done so, and, well, I just wanted to change that, before I die, which is getting nearer and nearer. I'm guessing that they'll respond warmly and positively, will agree with me, with a warm smile and handshake. Beneath the warm smile I suspect they'll be freaking out a little bit, as I will be. But the freak out will be more than compensated for by the tremendous accomplishment of finally, at long last, speaking to a person with whom I shared several of the most important, formative years of my life, in the same building, the same environemnt, with the sane shared experiences and memories we never before bothered to share. And I for one will poignantly muse a bittersweet thought, a thought which has been growing within me for several decades;that after high school, things change a great deal, and we do a great deal of growing and changing as the experiences of the adult world accumulate, pile uoon us layers of memory, and collectively shape our lives. But beneath all that, beneath the encroaching maturation, sopistication and the struggling, wheeling, dealing, the compromises, failures, disappointments and joys, really, not much changes after high school...