Sunday, October 22, 2017

Traveling Back



         Plane ticket : check


          Contact with BFFs : check
          Haircut :  check.
          L’Oreal-away those persistent gray hairs : check.

          Home mani/pedi : check.

          Obsessively try on possible outfits: check.



          Last week a high school reunion (a MAJOR one) was looming, and while I hadn’t seen my classmates since our 20th was held and I was certain I’d never see most of them again, I was still a bit edgy about the whole thing.

          Fortunately, I had work at our still-unsold house to keep my busy. I had vacuumed the rugs, cleaned the glass in the front door, and had just given the upstairs bathrooms a quick once-over.

          I came down the stairs, Comet and rubber gloves in hand, and somehow managed to miss the last three stairs and crash to the floor at the bottom. I lay for several minutes to inventory possible broken body parts while simultaneously picturing all the airport real estate I’d soon have to haul my suitcase through.

          Everything seemed to be moving the way it should, although one forearm was hinting at future colorful bruises and my ankle was definitely the worse for wear. (Some day I’ll write about the time my husband ran a chainsaw across his hand days before we were due to leave on a cruise.)

          Two days of ice and elevation and my ankle was still swollen but that plane ticket was unrefundable, so off I went.

          Some of our noteworthy alumni at Washington-Lee High School (Arlington, Virginia) were Forrest Tucker, Shirley MacLaine and her brother Warren Beatty – all well before my time – and Sandra Bullock – long after me.

          My year had a few minor celebrities – a couple of names you hear regularly on NPR, and a pitcher for the major leagues, but none were there that evening. With a graduating class well over 700, it wasn’t surprising that many there were unfamiliar to me.  I soon learned, though, that wasn’t necessarily because we hadn’t shared space in Algebra.

          With that many years under our belts – or maybe more accurately, over them, it was tricky to first recall the name, and then connect it to the face. One or two people were remarkably unchanged, but for the majority of us it was as though ghosts of our former selves fleetingly played across our faces.


12 comments:

  1. Glad you were not seriously hurt and could still make it to the class reunion. Falling is so scary. I can not imagine 700 in your graduating class. There were 35 in my mine.

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  2. Ouch. I am glad your injuries are relatively minor.
    I have never been to a school reunion, and doubt I will. My school days were NOT the happiest days of my life and I am happy to leave them buried.

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    1. I'm surprised I went, too, but it was a long-overdue chance to catch up with two friends from those days. We were wise and only attended the first (best!)evening which was an informal few hours reinforced by lots of wine.

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  3. Seventy odd in my graduating class. I've been back to one reunion. I think the 10th.

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  4. I haven't been to a class reunion for simply ages. I don't think they even know I'm still alive, but I am, so that's the important part. Ouch on that fall! I'm glad you didn't break anything. :-(

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    1. Me too! I don't seem to bounce the way I used to. Heaven knows I'm not short on padding.

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  5. I went to my 20th and not one since. didn't have many friends in school and I still didn't care for the rest of them. husband and I might as well have saved that money and done something else. we would have had way more fun.

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  6. Wow! That's a BIG graduating class. Mine had about 150, I think, and nobody is particularly famous. One girl became a state legislator, and she may be the best-known of all of us.

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  7. Oh, and more importantly, I'm sorry to hear about your injuries! Yikes!

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  8. Glad you're okay after that fall. I've never attended a reunion, that sort of thing didn't used to happen here in Australia, not that I know of anyway. It's becoming more popular now, I see notices in the Sunday paper for people from such-and-such year at this or that school or workplace to attend a reunion at a venue on a particular date.

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  9. At least you made the effort, good thing you were not hurt badly :)

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