I loved my childhood, my friends, my hometown.  I grew up in a small town where I went to school with the same people all through elementary school, joining up with other surrounding small towns when we reached junior high.  We were a class filled with first-borns and last-borns, a talented group both academically and in athletics.  It was a pleasure to grow up that way - surrounded by smart people who were outgoing, creative, funny, hard-working.  When I tell people where I grew up and the year I graduated, I expect that they'll remember hearing our school name on State Tournament rosters, and I'm surprised whenever they don't.  We were small in scale, but felt big and believed that we were.  I was proud to grow up in a place where the parents and community were proud of it's children.

Mike and Martin, and Mike's handcrafted table tent

It was lovely, getting together with this class of mine.  Talking with people I hadn't seen in 15 years.  But having known them for the first half of my life, I could still tell you their birthdates.  I could tell you the names of their siblings and parents, visualize their childhood homes and probably drive there, maybe even dial their old phone numbers.  But until this weekend, I couldn't tell you much about the people that they've become - all the big stuff in the second halves of our lives - like if they're married, if they have kids, where they live, what they do, how they are.

Mary and Bill

I felt some of the tension that is inherent in reunions - Who is that? Do they remember me?  I wish I hadn't said that years ago.  I wish I had. I wish I'd been nicer. I wish I hadn't put myself out there like that. I wish that I could do it again. I wish that they knew me now, for the first time, like a fresh start.

Mike, Marcus, Jason, Nate, Jason, Greg

I walked around seeing people I recognized and introducing myself just in case they couldn't remember.  I shook a lot of hands, gave hugs, met spouses, heard about kids and cracked jokes.  It was wonderful to look around the room and see the matured, comfortable faces of my old classmates and friends.  There were a lot of people there and I barely took any pictures.  Of the ones I took, very few turned out well.  I wish I had taken more, it would be fun to look at them today and probably even more fun a few reunions from now.

Debbie, me, Mary

Now I feel a bit of nostalgic melancholy, like if there were a soundtrack playing in the background of this moment it would be "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", because if you were a teenage girl anywhere in the late 80's/early 90's, anything Poison probably holds a special place in your heart (don't even try to deny it, and I know you're totally watching Bret Michaels new show, too).  I loved seeing old friends again, laughing over old jokes, finding humor in new similarities in our adult lives.  It was great to see that even though our lives have grown and changed, it's still pretty easy to hang out just like back in the day.  Except now we can use our own IDs at the bar.  Oh yeah, and you don't even get carded anymore.