Walking the Wall

This past Saturday my high school class had its twentieth reunion, actually, as I went to a small religious school, they did it for the class under mine and two above all together. Anyway, I had to miss it due to a family wedding that I couldn’t miss but I was ambivalent about going anyway. Twenty years! That sounds so long ago and in many ways it feels so long ago, but every once in awhile it will feel like yesterday.

There are so many memories, both snapshot memories and emotional memories that go alone with high school, some good, some bad, some wonderful, some terrible. There is a special category, I think, for our high school memories because they’re so intense–huge dramatic loves, heart wrenching breakups, the highs of cheerleading a great game, and the lows of wondering if anyone saved you a seat in home room! I wonder sometimes if reunions are all that great of an idea. Do the memories shatter under the reality of twenty years later, of faces changed and kids running around, and people completely different from high school–older, wiser, weighted and changed from twenty years of the good and the bad life has to fling our way? I wonder. I look in the mirror sometimes and am surprised to see my 37 year old face, every so often I walk by and do a double take, thinking, who is that!? Because sometimes from the inside looking out, I still see myself as that younger version. Would it be that odd to look at high school friends and do a double take, think, is that!? Or how strange would it be to not be recognized?

There was a girl I went to high school with that a few years ago I kept having dreams about. I hadn’t seen her since the year after we graduated when I went to her mother’s funeral. We were friends in high school, but not very close, we both had other closer friends. But I remember thinking as an adult with a bit more wisdom, that she was someone I wish I had been smart enough to have gotten closer to. So, I kept having these dreams, that I should call her, find her, and after some digging and hunting, I did find her and give her a call. We’ve been friends again every since and I am so glad that I called, and we certainly had no problem connecting the pieces of different times and pulling them together.

Still, our classes plan on getting together again in a few years, and I don’t know if I’d want to go even if I’m free then. I don’t know if I want my high school memories held up to the light of the present day, and I feel superstitious about it–as if somehow having all those people looking in my face for the person I was will somehow erase all the hard work that got me to the person I am today. I think I’d feel like a ghost of sorts, that people will be seeing and talking to someone they used to know and I, the real me, will be invisible.