20 years later

A few weeks ago my high school class celebrated the 20th anniversary of our graduation with a multi day/event reunion. (Yes, I said 20 years. I can't really believe it either . . .)

I was sorry to miss it, particularly the VideoMax dance that was planned for the Saturday evening. If you were a teenager anywhere in North America in the mid-to-late 80s, you'll know what a video dance is. My high school, much like the fictional high school immortalized in the 80s movie Footloose, banned dances on high school property until the year I graduated (I'll let you do the math for when that was). As a result, I spent most of my high school years attending teen dances at the community hall, dancing (or more often, wishing I was dancing) in front of a giant video screen showing the hottest videos of the day.

But I digress. Thinking about the reunion, and wishing I could attend it, made me realize several things. First, I realized that I have known many of the people who eventually attended the reunion since I was in elementary school, some from the first day I started kindergarten. Living in a place where no one has known me for longer than a few months makes me yearn for some of that shared history. It's hard to beat friendships developed over a lifetime.

Then I started thinking about what I was like in high school, and how my life has unfolded over the last twenty years.

Since I was a young child, I have always vaguely wanted to be a writer, although I remember agonizing over what to study in university (for a while I wanted to study math!) my last year of high school. But, I never envisioned that I'd end up as a technical writer.

And I assumed that 20 years later, I would be married and have a few kids.

However as bookwormy teenager, I always dreamed that I'd live in the Europe (mostly Paris) that Hemingway and others wrote about. So, I guess it's not that bad of a trade off to miss my high school reunion to fulfill a 20 year-old-dream.

But I still wish I could have gone - if you are reading this, and you have stories about the reunion, please share with me!