By Joe Hobby
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you may miss it.” – Ferris Bueller
I recently attended my Fiftieth anniversary high school reunion. That’s a lot to reflect on. Fifty years is a half century! It’s 600 months – 219,000 days. I didn’t compute the hours and minutes because it’s just too depressing.
A lot of water has gone under our bridges since we got our diplomas. It’s an extensive list, including: Watergate, disco, the oil crisis, Rodney King & the LA riots, MTV, Mount St. Helen’s, fall of the Berlin Wall, AIDS, the internet, mobile phones, the Challenger disaster, the Oklahoma City bombing, 911, the Simpsons, the Rover landing on Mars, and social media. Not to mention ten Presidents. And the general consensus of everyone at the reunion was, “Boy, that happened fast.” Believe me, Millennials, it did. It will for you too.
When I walked up to a group of my classmates for the first time, my initial thought was, “who are these old people?” There was lots of white hair and bifocals. More wrinkles than an old linen suit. Upon closer examination, I began to recognize some of these codgers as my high school friends. Then it hit me: I’m a codger too.
As you might expect, some of my classmates had aged well. Some even looked fantastic, and that’s between them and their plastic surgeon. However, others looked like they had gone one too many rounds with Father Time. Thank goodness for name tags.
After spending a few hours with my old friends, I came to a realization about time: it takes something away from us, but it also gives something back. There is no doubt that time steals our youth. No matter how good anyone looked, how much anyone exercised, or how healthy they ate, everyone at the reunion is approaching seventy. You can say “seventy is the new fifty” all you want. Seventy is still old.
However, time is a great equalizer. I couldn’t help but notice how the passage of time had eliminated the cliques that existed in our high school. At the reunion, all the sub-groups like jocks, nerds, thugs, and brainiacs were gone. The passage of time seemed to even things out between us. We had become part of one collective.
It was great fun to reconnect with people I haven’t seen since the Nixon administration. All afternoon, we caught up. Children, careers, and life experiences were all popular topics of conversation. And our health – which is a lot to talk about. When we were teenagers, about the only medical conditions that concerned us were pimples and jock itch. Now, it’s hearing aids, knee replacements, high blood pressure, acid reflux, and the settings on our CPAP machine. Damn you, time.
The great southern writer Rick Bragg once said that “nostalgia sells”. He’s right. It seems that everyone at the reunion was fondly telling and retelling stories from those formative years so long ago.
Immaturity sells too. My old friend Randy told me about shooting Roman candles out of a hotel window on a field trip. Long time buddies Dan and Dale recalled pulling in front of a bowling alley and mooning the patrons. Most of us rolled yards, egged houses, and blew up mailboxes with cherry bombs. My pal Mickey once dressed up as cheerleader and freaked out his English teacher by sitting in a less than ladylike position. To be honest, it would’ve freaked me out too. My best friend Richard pulled out a rubber snake in front of a teacher who promptly fainted. Before you check on the statute of limitations, I’ll point out that everyone I just mentioned are productive, successful, citizens. But I still wonder why we did those kind of things.
Time passed quickly, and soon I began making a final pass thru my classmates when I saw someone I missed – Darlene. We stopped, hugged and lied about how good each of us looked. She was the liar, by the way. I thought she looked just fine.
Only a few minutes had passed when I said,”I always think about Randy when I think of you.” Randy was a beloved classmate who left this world much too soon. At once, tears began flowing down her cheeks.
“I can’t think of him without crying,” she sobbed. “ When Randy died, it was as bad as losing my mother.”
I responded, “We all miss him. “He was a great guy.”
She nodded. “When we moved down here, Randy was the first person to reach out to me. He accepted me. He immediately made me feel like I was part of the group.”
And then she cried some more.
I pulled her close to me and gently patted her back. No more words were necessary.
It was the perfect ending to a high school reunion. In a few short hours, I had revisited some of the most formative years of my life. I reconnected with old friends. I laughed at their stories, and I cried at their losses. And like everything else in life, it truly went by too fast.
Ferris Bueller was right.
Joe Hobby is a comedian from Alabama who wrote for Jay Leno for many years.
For more of Joe’s stories, go to: https://mylifeasahobby.blogspot.com/?m=1. Also, follow him on Facebook at: Joe Hobby Comedian- Writer