This past weekend I took part in another one of those most American of activities: My high school reunion. In my case, it was my 30 year high school reunion of the class of 1979 from Cooper High School, in New Hope, Minnesota.

My class was the last of what was called “The Baby Boomers”, those born in this country from 1946-1961. We had roughly 775 kids in my graduating class. Cooper High school now has maybe 250 to 300 kids in their graduating classes now, tops, to put this into some kind of modern perspective.

High school is a time that conjures up all kinds of memories. I know for a lot of people, high school is kind of like Turkish prison in that you just hope that the time passes quickly before you get on with the real world. For other people, usually the star athletes(called Jocks, as in jock-strap), high school WAS the high-water mark in their lives, not too unlike the Bruce Springsteen song, Glory Days.  In our world, there were all sorts of cliques and sub-divisions of humanity: Jocks, theater-geeks, “brains”, burn-outs(as the name implied, those who smoked pot and did a variety of pharmaceuticals) and almost everybody in-between. In my case, I was able to walk amongst several worlds, as I had friends in almost every group-maybe that’s how I got elected as Student Council President. I played American Football(middle guard, or nose tackle on defense-that’s me in the white wearing #60 in this page from my yearbook), wrestled and ran track.(The half mile…yeah, that was quite a few pounds ago) I was a good student, and was always willing to to raise a ruckus and have a good time while attending other school sporting events. It was really a good time to have gone to Cooper, most of our sports were really good, and we had soome really good teachers, and I went to school with some great people. Since I did not have such a jaundiced view of school, like so many people, this means that I am one of those rare individuals whe really enjoy my class reunions and seeing how everybody is doing.

My only downer during high school, was that since I did not get my drivers license while in high school, it meant that dating was pretty non-existent for me: It’s tough to ask somebody out when you have to say, ” Can you drive? I don’t have my license.” Not a great way to score points with the ladies. In retrospect,  it turned out to be a good thing, because it saved me a ton of money and prevented quite a few headaches.

When you get together at these reunions, you see how some people have not really physically changed at all-you can recognize them in a hearbeat. For other people, as the years have changed their hairlines, waistlines and hair color, you have to look at their nametag to realize who they are. The nightmare scenario is when you are talking with somebody who has recognized you, then your spouse comes along, and good manners dictate that you introduce the still unknown person to your spouse.  I was fortunate that I was able to avoid that embarrassing situation on Saturday. Luckily for me, my wife had a party for her work that she had to go on Saturday, so that she did not have to feel like a 5th wheel and be bored to death.

The years have been kind to many of my classmates. I have to say that generally, my female classmates have aged a whole lot better than my male classmates(A few looked better now than when we were IN high school). For others, I can only say that it’s amazing how much alcohol and cigarettes can age a person. Some of my former classmates travelled great distances to get to the reunion: New Jersey, California, Arizona, and Texas were some of the places some of my classmates call home. Me? I did the opposite thing: I went to college in Iowa, and lived in Texas and Illinois before moving back to buy my house…right accross the street from my old high school. It’s like the same instinct that makes fish go back to die in the same stream that they were spawned in.While many of my classmates moved further out to the western or northern suburbs, I’m one of the few who actually had one of my own kids graduate from Cooper, as well. Many of my classmates were on second marriages or divorced. We had a wide range of ages of our kids. I know a couple of people who had kids the summer of 1979, who are now 30. A couple of us, like me and my insurance agent(and former football teammate) Jeff Petersen, are grandparents. I have to say, it’s one thing being a grandparent, I could not imagine HAVING a baby at my age(48), but a couple of my classmates have pre-school aged kids. YIKES!

One thing that you see in some American movies talking about reunions is the one-upmanship, or “Look at how successful I am now!” kind of phenomena. I have to say that I have not really seen that at any of our reunions. The only sad news was that I found out from Saturday, was that one of my football teamates, Tom Fahey, our co-captain and middle linebacker on our football team, recently got killed in a car accident.

Technology has also changed the nature of keeping up with classmates, thanks to the Internet and sites like Facebook. I have actually been able to add a few Class of ‘79 members to my friends list since Saturday. There is talk about doing a 35 year reunion in 5 years. That sounds like a long time, but time marches on. It did not seem that long ago when I see my classmates at our 25 year reunion.

Ah nostalgia…gotta love it.