Looking Ahead to My 50th High School Class Reunion

Why Couldn't My School Have Been like East High in High School Musical--Or was It?

Okay, so I'm 67 years old and I've watched and enjoyed both High School Musical movies on the Disney Channel-although I liked the first movie better than the second. What I liked best about both movies was the sense of being part of something that I never felt when I was in high school in little (population 2500) Lake City, Iowa, graduating class of 1958.

Next summer, 2008, barring any serious problems, I will attend my 50th high school class reunion and, like most of the reunions I've attended, it will be in Lake City, and being in the town will bring back memories-good and bad.

I've attended most of the class reunions. Our first one was ten years after we graduated; the rest have been at five year intervals. I remember in those early reunions how my mood would change into one of almost fear and shyness the closer my wife and I got to Lake City. I had been very shy in high school. I never dated. I wasn't unpopular, but I wasn't popular, either. I was just there. I had a few friends, but I was socially not very active.

Coming back to Lake City always reminded me of what I had been and made it difficult for me to see and appreciate what I had become. I had moved out of my shyness, had become a minister who preached and taught every Sunday, and had met and married a wonderful woman I met during my seminary days. The problem was that most of my friends from high school hadn't gone with me through those changes. I was, in many ways, the same guy they had known in high school.

I'm probably not being fair to them. I don't know what they went through during their time in high school. I don't know how they saw themselves and I certainly don't know how they saw me. I assumed certain things and responded to my assumptions.