Wasn't it just yesterday? Or maybe two lifetimes ago...

I ask you… who goes to their 20 year high school reunion and practically pees in their pants?

I’ll give you one guess.

But it really wasn’t my fault. Stupid cannon.

A better question would be… what kind of insane restaurant randomly fires a cannon off of a deck overlooking the lake? Well, the restaurant that the graduating class of 1990 chose for our 20 year shindig. I really think they should give more warning when they let loose with that thing. Or at least state on the invitation to the reunion that packing an extra pair of skivvies in your handbag might be a good idea.

So yes… we all survived the aptly named, “OMIGOD, it’s our 20 year reunion!” reunion. I’ll admit… I had a great time.

I will *also* admit, I was nervous. Isn’t everyone a touch apprehensive to see people they haven’t seen for two decades? Doesn’t everyone think about what it will be like to go to their reunion, ‘all grown up’? Having filled out in the places where they once were not so… um… full? Having discovered what tweezers can do for that pesky unibrow? Wanting to show up and show off, and trot out pictures of their houses and boats and over-gesticulate with their left hand to emphasize the shiny, enormous, diamond engagement ring?

Maybe. But if you ask me, (and it’s my blog, so let’s pretend you did), that’s how I picture it going at the 10 year reunion. (But I can’t say for sure because I didn’t *actually* go). At 10 years, you’re still a little ‘close’ to the trials and tribulations of high school. Still rather fresh from college, and intent on building your career. Maybe feeling like you have to prove yourself just the tiniest bit. Possibly newly married or starting a family, you’re an up-and-comer… a mover and a shaker, and a stop-off at the 10 year reunion is just what’s in order to boost a potentially battered post-grad ego. An “I’ve made it!” of sorts.

I don’t think that’s the case with the 20 year reunion. At 20 years, we’re all a little mellower. We have a little more ‘been there, done that’ under our belts, and the edges of those cliques have finally blurred. Grayed out just a bit more. The laughter is not so tight, and imagined slights have long since become the proverbial water under the bridge. We are bemused with our old selves as we pass around pictures. And we remember.


And so it goes with this group of people that I knew in a lifetime that seems a lifetime ago… the ones I knew before they grew up… the ones who knew me before I ‘grew up’… the ones that knew me before my dad died... some who knew my secrets… some whose secrets I knew… long before I was a wife and a mother and a volunteer junkie. Some I loved, and still do, of course… and others? Well, everyone knows how that is. I am not naïve or so nostalgic as to think that the passage of time would erase the gravitational pull we all feel to certain friendships. But I can honestly say that I was genuinely pleased to see every single person that made it to the reunion dinner.

Remember the detention assignment letter at the end of the movie, ‘The Breakfast Club’? How we all have just a little bit of each personality in us? How we are all a ‘brain... and an athlete.....and a basket case... a princess... ...and a criminal...’ How poignant that seemed, and how much we wanted to believe?

Well, I believe it to be true. We are old enough to be genuinely who we are, without taking anything away from anyone else, and also realizing that no one does (or ever has) fit into a nice, neat, little box with a label. We are all so much who we are now, as a result of who we once were. And who we were together.

So, 20 years have passed since we donned those red graduation caps and gowns, and it feels even truer now than it ever did. We are more the same than we were ever different, and perhaps there is a drama queen, a band geek, a brainiac, a football star, a homecoming diva...



and yes… even a pants-wetter… in all of us. ;)

Let’s not wait another 20 years, friends.