The fountain of youth

I had the excellent privilege of meeting with a large group of past high school classmates yesterday evening. What a delightful experience. A class reunion, in my opinion is the closest we'll ever come to the long sought fountain of youth. When I first walked in my first thought was "What have I gotten myself into?" My memory of names connected to faces is almost non-existent, especially given the changes we all go through as the years pass. However, there was someone that looked across the room and called out, "Joe, I'm glad you could make it!" followed by a rush through the crowd to give me a friendly handshake saying, "I'm '''''', do you remember me?" Yes, I did and suddenly I was in a friendly group of schoolmates once again with a steady stream of acquaintances busily catching up on the happenings in our lives. Within fifteen minutes we were all 18 again.

When we were all in school together it was a slightly different story. I, for my part scurried back and forth from class to class as if I was on a mission. However, being a friendly albeit sort of goofy young guy full of energy, growth spurts and extremely high expectations was finding it difficult to make time work for me very well almost to the point of appearing rude or unfriendly. I was sent to the principal or counselors office over 80 times in high school. Most were for running in the hallways between classes and a couple for being late for a class. Nothing real bad though. I worked before school, after school and on the weekends. After school activities were extremely limited and social activities almost unknown to me. The surprising thing to me is that so many of those kids that I sped so quickly by in the hallways spoke to me of the good times and fond memories they have about me. I left that social event feeling real good about myself. I felt forgiven for being a goofy kid. I brought up a few good stories of my own.

I have learned very much over my lifetime. One of the most important things is that we were all kids once. New to the world and learning the rules as we went along. In our own ways we were all sort of goofy kids. It's a pretty good group of people to belong to and be welcomed by. I couldn't help but say an immature goofy thing or two just to let them know that some things never change. None of us ever lost the love of laughter. We all need that from time to time don't we? It helps us maintain our youth.............Joe