The Big 5-0

My 50^th class reunion is this summer.  I’ll go, of course. I look forward to seeing the people I grew up with. We have so many stories to share.

We will remember and retell how we began locking the bathroom door after seeing the movie “Psycho”; how terrified we were during the Cuban missile crisis; how we swooned when Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show; how we cheered when John Glenn went into earth orbit; how grief-stricken we were when President Kennedy was assassinated; how we divided over the Vietnam war.

Fifty years ago, we were imagining our lives after high school. Most of us did not have the life we imagined for ourselves, but many of us can admit we’ve led interesting lives. The members of my graduating class went on to become journalists, military officers, politicians, physicians, judges, ministers, educators, artists, financial wizards, attorneys, a couple of drugstore cowboys, and a rodeo clown. (Okay, I made up the rodeo clown, but the rest is true.)

Among us are also survivors of divorce, alcoholism, cancer, and bad investments. Survivors is the key word in that last sentence—we may have gone a little crazy and howled at the moon, but we did not succumb.

So we have stories to tell.

Interesting stories, and lots of them.