The High School Reunion-Part One

Waiting in line during a layover in Tampa, I found myself gazing at a woman's face across from me. There was something familiar in that face. Staring, I thought that I recognized her as one of my friends from high school. I was a bit unsure in that I had not seen any of my high school friends for 40 years. After several minutes of pondering the situation, I finally got up the nerve to approach her.

"Gerry?" I queried.

She stared back at me for a few seconds, seemingly confused, as she tried to figure out who this strange woman was and, more importantly, how did she know her name? I finally identified myself...as she burst into a smile and a scream while opening her arms to me. We hugged for several seconds and then just stared at each other as the years melted away and we were two 58 year old women looking at each other as teenagers again.

Thus began my 40th high school reunion.

The two of us sat together on the plane for the remainder of the trip back to West Palm Beach and talked non-stop as we tried to condense all those many years into a 50 minute plane ride.

It was an incredible start for what would turn out to be two pretty amazing days of reuniting with old classmates.

I won't be back to Birmingham until Wednesday...but thought that I would at least get started writing down some of what I experienced while here in Florida.

Friday night was a "welcome get-together" and as I walked down the hallway into the hotel conference room I was feeling a mixture of emotions. Prior to the event, I had a drink with Tony and John, a couple of guys that I had been good friends with in high school. We sat and laughed as we talked a bit about "old times" mixed in with what we were up to now. As the time approached for the reunion to begin, Tony and I walked into the event together. As we heard the chatter coming from the room and got ready to enter, we laughed, looked at each other and said, "Well, here we go!" Looking around, I saw that people were milling about, chatting away and, of course, wearing name tags with our old high school yearbook pictures on them.

At first I did not recognize anyone and thought that all of my initial fears were coming true. However, slowly the faces started to become familiar and were greeted with screams of recognition and delight. Of course, I found myself needing to look down at the nametags for many of the people there....after all, we had all gone through a multitude of changes since our high school years.

What I found most interesting were the faces. While many were balding, heavier, grayer, and a little crinkled after all of this time, I found that if I looked into my classmates eyes I could see that youthful look again....I could find them again through a grin or a tone of a voice....Even though the years had passed, our inner 'being' was still the same and we smiled with recognition as we remembered the time in our lives that we shared with each other 40 years ago.

I am still trying to sort out some of the feelings that this reunion weekend brought out in me....But, after two very late nights, I am finding myself too tired to write any more tonight. After a good night's sleep I will continue my thoughts tomorrow. : )