My High School Eunion

My high school was one of the best in New Orleans but by the time I graduated I had come to hate it. I developed a healthy cynicism during those years, fueled by the irony of a Catholic school with military uniforms and a mandatory Jr. ROTC program. Thou shalt not kill, but let’s train you to kill. The Vietnam war was raging at the time, as were the protests.

I got through high school with my sanity intact, mostly because of three friendships I developed. We were quite different from each other but something unified us. Maybe it was because we weren’t part of the “in” crowd. I don’t even remember how we met. Maybe we sat near each other in class.

Sometimes the four of us did things as a group, sometimes we hung out in pairs. We occasionally spent time with each other’s families. All four of us went on to the same college, but that is where our paths began to split.

In the ensuing years I kept in touch with one of those friends and remain in touch to this day. However, I lost track of the other two for all the decades since … until last week. Out of the blue I received an email from one of them. As part of the ongoing “reconnect with my youth” philosophy I started when I turned 50, I recently posted my email address on the high school website so I would have access to the alumni database. My specific goal was to track down these guys. One of them happened to visit the site shortly after I did this and he found me instead. It turns out the second one married the first one’s sister, so they have definitely been in touch with each other all these years.

And now the internet has enabled the three of us to be in touch and to begin catching up. The fourth friend in this group happens to be the only person I know who does not have email, but I’ll forward information from his regular mail so he can be part of this.

I haven’t been to any of my official high school reunions since the first year and I don’t plan to go to any of them in the future. But I am thrilled to be part of this high school e-union. I’m excited to reconnect with this part of my youth and they seem to be as happy to hear from me as I am to hear from them.