Summer is here - let's have a Reunion
Seems like just about everybody likes to attend reunions, especially High School reunions. We all know why we have reunions and why we all like to attend these big get-togethers, we all know it’s because we want to prove to all the “kids” that we went to school with 10, 20 or 30 years ago, that we look younger than they do.
Have you noticed that at these reunions everyone looks like a stranger and is required to wear a name tag? And when the person who used to be your best buddy in school walks up to you, they never look you straight in the eye, they look directly at your name tag. Now I can’t remember wearing a name tag in school and they knew me then. Why don’t they know me now? I can understand why everybody else has to wear their name on their shirt, they look a lot different, but why me. I’m the same person; Well. maybe I am a little shorter and a little thicker around the waist (I’m convinced that your height settles around your waist, after you are forty) buy my hair is the same color (they call it, chemical dependency) and my eyes are the same color (when I forget to wear my pink eyeglasses) and the little lines around my eyes are simply the result of laughing.
In my opinion, there seems to be a marked difference when you attend a reunion for a small town school and one for the larger schools in Longmont, Greeley or some other so called. . .“Big City.” I have been to both kinds of reunions, because Paul attended Johnstown High and I served my time at Longmont High.
I attended a class reunion with all these strangers, several years ago for Longmont High School, class of 195» (oops). Well, when everybody finally remembered the names on the name tags (not the person) and the party started rolling; the reunion committee started the awards program. These have to be the silliest awards of all times. They had an award for the person that had been married the longest and the person that had the oldest kid (these two usually go. hand in hand - but not always), an award- for the person who had travelled the longest distance, just to walk in to a room full of strangers with pieces of paper stuck to their chests, and last but certainly not least, an award for the Homecoming Queen of 1950, that the committee claimed was still the most beautiful girl in the room. Well, let me tell you, when the Queen walked up on the platform to receive her well deserved keychain, she didn’t look seventeen years old anymore, she looked as old as all those other people in the room. But the air of elegance was still there. This just proved to me what I have always thought…Once a Homecoming Queen, always a Homecoming Queen.
Sunday, we attended a reunion picnic for Johnstown High and this is where I saw the difference in school reunions. It seems to me, that people who have attended small town schools are more relaxed and comfortable. And all the “kids” that Paul went to school with in Johnstown had more interesting names than the “kids” I went to school with in Longmont. For an example, when we got home Sunday. Paul said, “It was so nice to see Boomer again, I just wish Itchy, Fuzzy, Ace and Chunky would have been there.” Now this statement leads me to believe…Once a Johnstown boy always a Johnstown boy.
Now I can’t imagine anyone introducing the Longmont High School Homecoming Queen of 1951. by saying, “here comes Chunky,” but I bet if they had, all the other “girls” in the room would have enjoyed it as much as I would have.
