Why Did That Feel Weird?
Monday, July 06, 2009, posted by Q6 at 5:21 AM
Two years ago I went to my 20 year high school reunion (I posted about that here), and I remember walking away being glad that I went . . . but I didn't walk away with much else. People either looked exactly the same or completely unrecognizable. It was good to attend such a milestone--20 years, after all--but it's not like we still had a lot in common.

Last month I got together with about a dozen people from high school (a "mini-reunion" for a classmate who lives in the Bay area and wasn't in town for the reunion), and it was more of the same: lots of "what have you been doing since then," "what are you doing now," and quite a bit of storytelling of days past. It was nice to see them all, and it was nice to catch up. Most of us had connected on Facebook.

And just like the 20 year reunion, the whole thing felt kinda weird. In the end, I was having dinner with a dozen strangers.

I guess it wasn't that awkward, since it was easy to tell the old stories and get the old laughs, but it still felt odd to act ("act" may not be the right word) chummy with people I no longer see on a day-to-day basis. I think I'm much more comfortable with my present-day life than I am trying to connect, reconnect, or hold on to my past. Given how easy it was to sit and talk with my former schoolmates, I'd probably disagree with the adage "You can't go home again"--you can go home again, but it may not always be the home you remember it being.

If nothing else, the evening reminded me how much I've done and how far I've come in forty years . . . but that's a separate blog post I'm working on.
 
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