Reunion

About a week ago, I went to a high school reunion. It was typical of those types of things. Liquor flowed, people told stories about one another they hope their children never hear. I saw people I'd seen in recent months and some I hadn't seen in more than three decades.

I don't consider high school a great time in my life. In a sea of 750 or so faces in my graduating class, I most often felt on the fringe. Some of that was simply being a teenager, some of it my attitude, some of it social class realities. But it's not something I hold in an idealized memory.

But time does even things out. I'm not sure caste systems and cliques ever completely disappear, but the boundaries fade greatly. You stop fearing speaking to the most beautiful girl in the class. Major jocks' physical appearance and athleticism fades. People improve their social skills and appearance.

And there's something to be said coming from the same basic time and place. Although some of those people preferred disco over country or could afford designer clothes over a single pair of torn jeans, there is some type of commonality. We talked about things we did that should mean we'd not lived to this point. And we joked we were lucky to "grow up in Mayberry."

We also recognized many of us grew up in a world that was laying the groundwork for too much substance abuse, where societal expectations often left us with absentee fathers who worked too much and parents who simply didn't know how to be emotionally honest.

But the ingredients of a safe environment and challenges under the surface were shared and created that group of people who'd survived and returned.

In addition, there were those who'd grown enough to express themselves in ways they hadn't then or in the interim. To say for their entire lives they'd held onto some little relationships that had been in that time and helped them throughout the rest of their lives. People recounted single conversations that had stayed all this time. They pointed out bonds they'd felt never frayed despite being stretched greatly by distances and time.

I saw and heard a lot of people in a lot of different ways express how important not only someone was to them, but is to them. Even if they hadn't spoken in 30 years.

I'm constantly surprised by our humanity. I think watching it and wanting to point it out is a major reason this blog exists. The human condition is so complex, unexpected and invigorating it should never be overlooked. We prove how complicated we are in the most basic simple ways. Little sentences like "thank you" or "you're important to me" are fuel for going on.

I'll raise a toast to the Class of '75. Not for the parties or the stories or the girlfriends. For the surviving humanity.