The Day After

Many of the class of 65 met last night at a local Country Club.  I went to get in the class picture and little else.  The best of our reunion was the 53 year reunion of our Junior High Class and it was where I got to be with the kids that I spent 10 years in school with.  By High School we were a pretty diverse group and in a school of 5,000 and a class of 1200 was hard to stay in touch.

This dedicated to the Minneha Hawks.  May we always remain vigilant.

 One of the girls wondered why we didn't have more minority students at the reunion.  I told her that I was pretty sure that the next reunion would love to have her chair the minority invitation section.

Is there a real reason we go to reunions that hasn't soaked into my brain housing group?  Do we go to lord it over others, to see how good they look or to try to see how young we look?  A very small part of me wants to say "what if" and another part of me says "Whew, I dodged that bullet."  In no way do I want to say anything bad about where I got to.  We worked darned hard to get here and I am glad we did.

One of my friends that I grew up with lives in Kingman, KS.  I looked him up on his land line and call phone and got no answer.   Kingman is just a short drive west of Wichita so we just drove over to see.  Our first sign was that his name wasn't on the mailbox.  When we pulled up in the yard, it was clear that there were no tractors or old cars there anymore so I figured he didn't live there any more.  I drove over to the High School where he had been a teacher and sure enough, he was there.  I now have an address and a cell phone number.  It makes me think that in this day and age when we have all this instant communication, we need to keep someone posted how to get in touch with us.  When Mom and Dad were alive, they were my home of record but those days are long gone.

Today will be a turn around for us as we are nearing a trip out west.  We are taking our Daughter-in-Law with us so it will be an interesting trip.  I know the Barb's enjoy time together and I will probably be the odd man out.  But that is nothing new to me. 

In the Military, I think one of my strengths was in the area of planning.  I just wish my memory was as good now as it was then.  The weakness is not that I don't plan well, but I forget some of the things I had cross my mind.  I guess  I will need to start taking notes one of these days.  Perhaps like the Nursing Home where they had a sign that said, "Today is Monday, the 28th of September."  Probably will need to have a to do list posted below that.  Barb does spark my memory when she asks me what's on my agenda.

This weekend when I got to see a lot of my old friends, I had cause to wonder if my memories of back then are absent because they were not memorable or if they were forgotten to protect the guilty?   I know that I would have been on Ritalin back then and probably would have been a better student but it wouldn't have been as much fun. 

Better get moving. 

MUD