Today I received word that my 20 year high school reunion is scheduled for Nov. 1st. Certainly it isn’t that time already. There is no way 20 freaking years could have passed since I graduated high school, right? I don’t feel 20 years older than I did back then. I can bring the school, the friends, the feelings, the routine into such crystal clear focus in my mind that it can’t possibly be 20 years ago. It seems simultaneously impossible and deeply shocking that it happened so quickly.

Our perception of time speeds up as we age, the years feel progressively shorter as they tick away. As a consequence, adolescence plays out in an epic high definition sweep, and everything afterward begins to blur. For me, it became noticeable around the time I turned 30 years old. That was back in 2000. Y2K, the big computer panic, the new millennium. Up to that point things seemed to be moving along at a rather orderly pace, and then– woosh. 8 1/2 years have passed in the blink of an eye. The football seasons come and go, birthdays, anniversaries, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, spring, summer, fall, winter like the spaces on a big roulette wheel, spinning round and around.

I don’t think nostalgia is the right word to describe how I feel about my high school years. Nostalgia is a longing for the past, the idealized past. Thinking back, I like to believe I knew how good I had it. I was extremely lucky to have the friends, the relationships and environment I did in high school. Okay, maybe there is a bit of idealization going on with the relationship part, I’m heavily discounting some legendary fights and meltdowns. But on the whole, it was an amazingly good 4 years of my life.

With the reunion coming up, I can’t help but wonder how my old friends view those times we spent together. For instance, I wonder if Mark McCormick remembers the night before our last day of school. We stayed up until 2:00am cramming for Gordon’s Physics 2 final exam the next day. As we were studying, I remember telling Mark that this was it– this was the last time we would ever have to cram for a final in high school, the last test, the last day. What I failed to realize at the time was how poignant a memory it would become, such a simple thing as studying for a test with a friend.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 8:45 pm and is filed under High school, Central High School, I'm getting old, 20 year high school reunion, Holy shit, Louisiana, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.