24th May 2006

High school reunion
By John Fischer

I attended my high school reunion last weekend. I'm not going to tell you which one, but I will tell you that everyone there had aged significantly. I wouldn't have recognized one of them had I met them on the street. Of course they all recognized me right away. (The fact that we wore our senior pictures on our nametags might have had something to do with that.)

This is the first one of these things I have ever attended, including college reunions, so I didn't know what to expect. I felt a little dumb walking in with my 9 x 11-inch framed drum major picture, but the brochure asked us to bring memorabilia. I felt even dumber when I realized I was the only one who brought anything. So I snuck into the banquet room early and set it up right next to the SGHS cheerleading megaphone. I was glad I decided not to wear my JV letterman's sweater.

I was pretty much of a nobody in high school. Most of my social life at the time revolved around the church youth group. Even though I was on the student council as drum major my senior year, I rarely attended social events, especially the sock hops and proms, because dancing was forbidden in my fundamentalist upbringing. As one of my friends put it this weekend when the subject came up, “John was restricted.”

As we reminisced around my table, I realized everyone else knew more stories about my past than I did. It became increasingly evident to me that these people cared more about me than I cared about them back then. I felt left out in high school but I realize now it wasn't because anyone left me out. They would have let me in, in a second, but I stayed away. They let me in last Saturday, and I was grateful for it ... and humbled.

One guy in particular had tracked with me from first grade on. He had clearly made it his point to know just about everyone in the room. As we were saying our goodbyes, I told him. “Owen, I wish I had gotten to know you better back then, because you are a really great guy.”

Of course that doesn't mean I can't get to know him now, and it also doesn't mean I can't appreciate more the people in my life today with whom I might share a reunion of sorts down the road from here.

I used to make fun of these reunions. I will never do that anymore. These are great people, and I have much to learn from them. Isn't life all about relationships anyway? If no one is an accident, then we are all far more significant than we realize.