The Reunion

 Although I do have a Facebook account, I never got into Messenger. It just seemed to be a worse version of using the default texting app on my iPhone. I also hated that people could easily add my name to huge groups and then send idle chatter all day long causing my phone to always  beep. So I found out how to mute notifications from Messenger and rarely look at it much to the chagrin of some people I know.

But once in awhile I do check in and not to long ago found a message from my graduating class's foreign exchange student. She was going to be back in our neck of the woods and was wondering if I could send out the call for an impromptu class reunion. Since this was a replay of a similar reunion we had ten years ago, all the work was essentially done and so I wrote back that I would send out invites and arrange everything.

Getting everyone together on the tail end of a pandemic on a Saturday evening proved to be problematic. The last reunion was held in a restaurant in a town where we all went to elementary school, a large restaurant (and only restaurant) in a town with a population of only a few hundred people. Despite this, the staff didn't seem keen on us taking up too much space and loudly conversing and so I looked into other venues. Finally after lots of mental debate, I just settled on my backyard. It was near enough to most people to make it an easy trip, outside we could alleviate covid concerns, and we could stay as long as we wanted and not bother anyone or take up space that others would pay to have. So it was agreed to and the date was set.

At the time of year, with temperatures average around 70 F degrees for a high, and lows in the lower 50's, I thought it would be a great time to hold a bonfire. But as the day arrived, the temperature was south of freezing and the high was forecasted to only get up in the high 40's. I build the bonfire up anyway so I could burn some derecho debris and the foreign exchange student arrived first. We sat around the bonfire for about ten minutes waiting for others and then decided to just move it indoors.

As it turned out, we had a 50% attendance rate! Lest you worry about how crowded it was inside our very small house, we only had 8 kids in my graduating class so besides the foreign exchange student, only the two other boys in our class (fraternal twins) showed up and of course myself. One of the other four girls had messaged me in the morning that their family was sick and didn't want to pass anything around and another girl who acknowledged seeing the invite, never showed up. The two remaining girls I just have never been able to contact for one reason or another. I have sent messages to siblings who either ignored them or passed them on and I still never got a response. 

Despite half of the class unable to attend, the four of us had a good time catching up. There was the usual reliving of memories, some setting the record straight, getting caught up on everyone's life since graduation, etc. It amazes me to see the young teenager still present in everyone though to anybody else, they just look like an adult just shy of a mid-life crisis. It isn't a view that I see everyday. Of the four, only one of them ended up as I expected in high school. He wanted to be a farmer and is. The pilot ended up as a manager of a company that provides services for farmers. A wife and kids got in the way of enough hours to fly commercially. The lawyer got her law degree and now sells cheese out of a truck after deciding being a lawyer just wasn't living the dream. The engineer is now a semi-retired stay at home dad trying to find ways to put his engineering skills to use in a family environment.

Of those that didn't come, the quiet one who never really interacted with people in now a registered nurse with her own practice of interacting with people on a daily basis. Another person whom we never could really peg down to anything in life ended up becoming a rad-tech in a local hospital. The other two we really just don't know. One is rumored to have had/still have cancer and isn't doing well and the other is rumored to be still living in the town where we went to high school, population of less than 500, and yet despite some of us regularly frequenting town and it's two or three viable businesses, we've never seen her. 

I'm glad we were able to make this work on short notice before our foreign exchange student headed back home overseas. Since we've been averaging a reunion about once a decade after we began with a 20 year dry spell, the next ten years will be one with quite a few changes. Those of us with kids still in the house, (as far as I know only three of us) will have become empty nesters, those with grandkids already might have even more of them, and possible many of us will be retired. Perhaps one or more of us will be six feet underground by then. With the exception of the latter folks, I'm looking forward to seeing those who make it ten years from now and seeing where we ended up after all those years.