20 Years

This weekend was spent reminiscing the good old days of 20 years ago.

Twenty years.  Seriously?

I always thought people who attended twenty year class reunions were stinkin' old.

Now I am one of them.

Back then we all lived within 10 miles of each other.

Now we are in Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, spread across the state of Kansas...and who knows where else.


Back then we were athletes, debaters, brainiacs, cheerleaders, FHA/FFAers, singers, and actors/actresses.

Now we are teachers, coaches, finance guys, stay-at-home moms, EMT's, business professionals, graduate students, skilled laborers, and nurses.

We've come a long way, baby.

But some things never change.

The guy who entertained us in high school by continually running outside to get his books that were thrown out the window during College Prep English still entertained us with stories of breaking his leg while roller skating in full protective gear.

The girl who had us laughing with her amazing acting abilities in high school still had us cracking up with her quick wit and stories of her life experiences.

One of our super-star athletes who was continually given grief about being our one and only hope for a claim to fame was still harassed about his outstanding athletic talent.

And I am sure that I heard the phrase, "You haven't changed one bit..." thrown around to one person or another at least 10 different times.  When it comes to sense of humor, we are one eclectic group of people.

Some of  the group hadn't aged at all and looked nearly identical to the pictures in our high school yearbooks. 

Others of us....not so much.

Which is a divine blessing considering all the big hair and big glasses we were sporting in 1993. 

Yesterday morning we toured the elementary, middle, and high schools where many of us spent 13 entire years together.

Oh, the memories that came flooding back...first kisses in the kindergarten bathroom, hiding in the basement for tornado drills, the 5th grade play, our 6th grade teacher making students hold his hand down the hall when they were misbehaving, JH English, Singers practice in the girls locker room, and, of course, the famous red dress....

We still wonder if that teacher ever knew that her red dress brought the entire shop class full of guys to a complete standstill for at least 10 minutes every day that she showed up in that thing.

Good times.

Good memories.

But now, several years later, several degrees later, several hours of work later, several kids later...we are making our way in the world. We have gone our separate ways, yet still remain connected to our past.

Although I will venture to guess that when we wrote in each others yearbooks that "we will stay friends forever no matter where life takes us".....we had no idea that we were predicting the future of social media!