Side Streets, Kimbra Traynor Herb, 744 words
A 20th Class Reunion?
By Kimbra Traynor Herb
IPS Features
Not for
long....... in three days I will be reacquainting myself with these people who
at one time were my social circle. Someone named "Phil" signed
my year book with the words: "You little fox! Stay fine looking and sweet
and you can get anything you want; love you lots, Phil." I couldn't
remember who Phil is.....
I scanned the
pictures of the yearbook and came upon a picture of a dark headed boy no older
looking than my oldest son. "Tanya" wrote that "you are honestly
one of my best friends..... I MEAN THAT!" and yet, here I am, twenty years
later, scanning the pages to find out who the heck Tanya is! Yikes! In just
three days I am going to be face to face with people who I haven't spoken to or,
for that matter, thought about in twenty years! Scary. Luckily for me, I am
going to have plenty of moral support.
My brother in
law, Gary, graduated the same year as I did and is bringing his wife to the
reunion. The way I figure it, his big faux pas on the phone with Kim Stamford,
the reunion organizer, will more than make up for the fact that I am going to be
fuzzy on nearly every face I encounter. Apparently, when she called him to fill
him in on the details of the reunion, she began by saying, "This is Kim
Stamford; do you remember me?!
We used to be
BEST FRIENDS!" (Weren't we all 'best friends' in high school?) Instead of
faking it (like I would have) he said, "Umm, no, I have NO IDEA who you
are!" She replied, stung, "You are kidding me, right!? You are just
teasing! We were SO CLOSE in high school!" He told me that he had no idea
who he was talking to and it wasn't until he dug out his old yearbook that he
was able to place the forgotten Kim. Ahhh, forgotten good
times. How can it be that we are now twenty years out of high school when life
still seems so tantalizingly new?
My kids don't
find it hard to believe at all. "Mom, you guys are OLD!" My middle son
said, when I told him we would be attending the reunion.
"What's
with all the afros?" My oldest inquired, flipping rather disinterestedly
through my yearbooks.
“It was the
seventies." I replied. "Lots of people had afros." Luckily, I
didn't. My high school pictures, though not the height of glamour and
beauty, still look pretty much like me, albeit a "me" with Farrah
Fawcett hair complete with sweeping "wings" that were so popular at
the time. "I wonder if Mike will still think I am 'the foxiest girl on the
JHS campus'?" I asked my oldest son this morning, as I prepared to take him
to HIS high school for band practice.
?Mom!" He
groaned. "That's just gross."
I keep teasing
my husband that I am going to leave him sitting alone for hours while I go off
and kiss Greg McFall, the boy I "cheated" on him for in high school.
My husband, God bless him, has WAY more a sense of humor about this than I would
if the tables were reversed. In fact, the reason I brought up the subject at all
is that my beloved hubby left ME alone for more than an hour two years ago while
HE caught up with his old girlfriends at his high school reunion. Needless
to say, I wasn't amused; hence the Greg McFall joke.
Sometimes I
wonder if it would be better to just stay home, to open some more boxes and look
through the high school paraphernalia and remember (as much as my foggy brain
will allow) everyone from high school in all of their glorious youth. I fear
that the shocking reality of how much I've aged will come to stare me in the
face when I see the balding, aging bods of my fellow Class of '81ers.
Aging, just like
life, though, can't be kept in a box. We keep marching boldly on; and do the
best we can as we grow older to forget that we scorned our own parents for being
"so way old" when they went to their class reunions.
I am curious, too, to see how everyone grew up. As for
me, my fellow classmates will have to wait until the fortieth class reunion to
see how I grow up. I am still a work in progress.