Sunday, August 9, 2009

Shadle Park reunion

Went to my 30th class reunion on August 1st and took the trip down memory lane but also had a lot of thought provoking conversations.

First off it was great to see so many of my class mates doing well. The friends we make during our school years can be quite important to our personality and make-up. I was fortunate to have to very good people whom I had as friends. Those early friends helped me to develop self confidence and self image. Most of the people I hung out with knew who they were and what they wanted to do with their lives by the time we left high school.

The interaction of the reunion was quite interesting to me. Most of the people that I talked to I haven't seen for at least 10 years (the last reunion) yet we picked up our relationship as if we had visited just yesterday. For the most part people where just there to see old friends with very little concern of trying to impress anyone. We did have one person who drank to much and then of course started talking too much and too loud.

One conversation I had, has kept me thinking on it for quite some time now. I was talking with a girl I got to know my senior year as the friend of a friend of mine. She was a person I thought had everything going for her during school as she was very intelligent, nice personality, friendly and beautiful, you know the ideal high school kid. When I got the chance to hang out with her and get to know her during school I felt quite fortunate. Anyway when talking about the school years she said that she wasn't really fond of them for she didn't have many friends and didn't feel a real part of it, kind of like she was institutionalized. I spent most of the drive home thinking about that conversation and was worried by it. She is doing great now as she is a lawyer and has a good family and is enjoying life, she just saw high school as a stepping stone and not a trampoline. The reason it worried me is that if it was like that for her a person who had/has a lot going for them what is it like for some of my students today who don't know where they want to go or do.

I felt bad that I never told her what a neat person she was back in high school, something that many of my friends had done for me. How many times do we have those people in our lives that are special to us but we never let them know? So once again I come away from my association with my classmates having learned something. I would love to get some of them to come to Onalaska and do a career day type thing with my Seniors and hopefully help them out some. I might have to make a few calls and see if I can get that done.

1 comment:

BJ Barnes said...

Wonderful, emotionally honest, thought provoking post! :) ...

One of the things I'm struck by when I think back to my highschool years, is how little we actually knew about our classmates personal lives, even though we interacted on a daily basis with each other! In my case, we attended a small school ( Toledo ). Most of us had been together since kindergarten or gradeschool. We were such a big part of each other's developement, and yet only just scratched the service of what each other's lives were like, - especially if we'd never been to each other's homes! We went strictly by what we were willing to share with each other, -which looking back, wasn't very much! It was all pretty much service stuff. I liked and cared about them, but never thought to dig any deeper than what they were willing to offer about themselves.
Sometimes I wonder if anything has changed. For years I've been attending our ward, yet there's so much I still don't know about everyone. I like and care about my ward family, but don't seem to ask many questions to really get to know everyone better.
I think that's one of the reasons I love blogs so much, as it gives us an opportunity to get better aquainted and care more deeply about one another. :)