I had a brief discussion via comments on Facebook with someone I knew in high school today. We reminisced about our Senior class play, about high school dances at a neighboring school, about being on the swim team. I kind of summed up by saying that I have enjoyed getting back in touch with people from high school.
One of the things I chose not to consider was that all the rest of the people I attended school with also carried on after high school. They, like I, have had both failures and successes, high points and low points, have traveled or staid put, and, of course, gotten older. We are now just past the threshold of middle age, and I believe that all of us, like me, look back on who we were with a mixture of fondness and embarrassment.
Time tricks us like that, I guess. It doesn't help that some of us really look the same (Steve and Beth. . .) and one or two have aged like wine (Kim and Chuck. . .). The rest of us? Well, let's just say that time has done well by those of us who have made it thus far (a few haven't, sad to say; one gone by suicide, one by chronic alcoholism, a third by some chronic health problem that had already emerged in HS). For the most part. It also tricks us by setting in concrete images and thoughts that are in fact fleeting, transitory, ephemeral. Growing up, moving one, getting educated, getting married, becoming parents - we have all done one or more or all of these things, and time has left its mark on our lives. We haven't yet, I think, started to rebel against us, although nostalgia is present - all those "Gifts From the Valley" requests, you know (if you have to ask what "the Valley" is, then you didn't grow up there, more's the pity).
All in all, getting back in touch, reminiscing, sharing stories about the past and the present, reminding us all that none of us have stood still in our lives - it's all good.
I am quite thankful, by the way, that there as yet does not exist any copy online of my senior photo. Now that would be embarrassing.
Virtual Tin Cup
