Sometimes you have to look to the past to see where your future leads.

I was just thinking about this the other day. I took a quick weekend trip back “home” to Colorado where my high school class held a loosely organized 35th reunion.

My summers are frenzied due to the seasonal nature of our business and even taking a bathroom break is at times impossible. An overnight trip halfway across the country is tempting the Fates, but hey, everyone deserves an intermission from life even if it is brief.

Since invitations were issued via email and Facebook, I assumed only a handful of the original 540-plus class of 1974 would show up. No big deposits for dinner in a fancy ballroom (that was the tenth reunion, held at the Broadmoor); we were going to meet in a local restaurant and pay for our own drinks and dinner. I was looking forward to an intimate setting, one where we could linger over thoughtful conversations. A lot has happened in the last 35 years, much of it positive. I was excited to connect with people in the flesh, ones I rarely interacted with in high school but who are now fast friends (with recent help from the Internet).

We instead ended up a raucous, friendly mob taking over most of Giuseppe’s Depot, thanks to the addition of a small contingent of the Class of '73 (and my sister, Class of ’76).

There are many strong feelings associated with taking a step back in time. To mingle with people with whom you once spent four (or twelve) compacted years, some joyous, some stressful, is an exercise some can never undertake. Take my husband. He has no compulsion to return to his highbrow St. Paul neighborhood for high school reunions and never has.

High school is, was, and will always be a microcosm of the larger world – a microcosm, yet in many ways amplified a thousand times. Even in then-rural Colorado, there were cliques, those clear lines of demarcation — the athletes, the charming beautiful popular people, the smart kids, the burnouts, the troubled kids, the nerds, the ranch kids. High school is often a conflagration fueled by peer pressure, angst, and an overload of adolescent hormones. The problem lies in those four years. It may seem like an eternity when you’re in the thick of it, but it’s actually just a sliver of life.

Article Author: Joanne Huspek

I'm an aspiring novelist with a day job which makes writing an interesting clandestine tryst. Currently a member of Romance Writers of America and the Greater Detroit Romance Writers of America. My web site (www.joannehuspek.com) is currently in limbo, …

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