Class Reunions

It’s hard to believe but I graduated from high school 60 years ago. I know this because I just got a letter from the reunion committee reminding me that our 60th reunion is coming up in a few months. Good old Merrill, who was editor of the North High student paper is the head of the organizing committee for the event. Here he is, 60 years later, playing pretty much the same kind of role he played so long ago.

Merrill was a friends in high school and for several years following when we both were counsellors at a summer camp for boys. We used to meet after the kids were down for the evening to talk about what we wanted to do with our lives.

Getting the letter from Merrill triggered lots of memories of my high school years, some happy and some not so happy. Being a teenager is a special time of life. It’s a time when our bodies go through amazing changes, fill out and grow taller. It’s a time when we test ourselves physically and when we discover and experimenting with our sexuality. It’s also a time when we think about what our lives will be like when we leave home and move into the adult world.

When I think about it, the high school years were probably the most intense years of life that I can remember. So much change going on. Like most people, I wouldn’t want to do it again, but it certainly does remain as clear with vivid memories even after these many years.

Class reunions used to be held every five years. They usually went on over a full weekend of eating, drinking, and activities, most of which were pretty vigorous, like touch football, volley ball, and baseball. Somewhere along the line, reunions became one day events, it was harder for people to get the time to spend whole weekends together as families grew and job-related responsibilities became heavier.

Then, when we got into our fifties, the reunions shrunk to an evening together. The increasing years since high school probably accounted for this change. So much time had passed and people had less and less to share with each other.

We moved into our sixties. Merrill and his committee continued to organise reunions, but they changed the time of day from evening to lunch time, in recognition of the fact that many of us were tucked away in bed by 10 or 11 PM.

I’m amazed that there is still an effort to hold reunions because so many of our graduating class have passed away or moved to warmer climates. I guess it is a testimony to the importance of those long ago years when we were young.

I’m sure that most high schools have their own version of Merrill. Without them we would not be reminded that we were once so young or how far along our lives have come. Stopping occasionally to give thought to my earlier years is a positive thing to do. It reminds me of the fact that I was not always an oldster, that I have had the privilege of living a long and, to me at least, meaningful life, much of which was being germinated during those long ago high school years.

Whether due to notices of class reunions arriving in the mail or other triggers that come our way to remind us about earlier phases of our lives, it’s a good idea to pay attention to them. We didn’t arrive as elders overnight. We got here after experiencing earlier phases of life that constitute the foundations of who we are now. They also provide clues as to how we got here and, hopefully, where we may be heading. If nothing else, they are helpful in triggering memories that may have been asleep for a long time.

By Mike Milstein. Read more here.

Mike is the author of Resilient Aging: Making the Most of Your Older Years. Available on Amazon, Kindle version and paper back.