Together again
I’m gearing up to spend a wonderful weekend with some old friends. College friends, but that makes it sound so plebeian… We were in the Art Department fer crissakes, and a freakishly talented group, too. So out of the ordinary, we need a better, more descriptive designation, right? Art Rats. Visually Trained Humans. Aesthetes. Hmm. Not nearly cool enough. Oh, and I’d have to add “& friends.” Not everyone was an art student. Some were just cool in their own right.
Anyway, my friend R. and family are already here and we’re having a blast, hanging out, swimming, shopping, dining. And tomorrow kicks off 2.5 days with others of the gang (alas, not everyone could make it), hanging out, eating BBQ, looking at art, laughing, eating some more and generally having fun.
A nice thing to do, reuniting. I’ve been doing this a good bit lately. Against all odds, I, a formerly not-so-popular, non-cheerleader choir nerd, am now heading up my high school reunion committee, and we recently got together in a non-reunion year to celebrate turning 50. The party was fun, but the committee meetings leading up to the party were perhaps even better. I LOVE catching up with friends from my past. And the older I get, the more past I have. Awesome.
Advice of the day: I recommend going to a high school reunion, even if you didn’t have a great high school experience, and even if you didn’t know many of your classmates. It teaches you a lot: That all that stuff that mattered SO much back then – how popular you weren’t, how snooty the cute girls were, how unkind life seemed – all evaporates with time. Time is the great leveler. The handsome jock may be scraping by in a dead end job, while the guy nobody noticed has the brilliant career (but you already know this if you watched Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion). There are time-worn yet relevant lessons to be learned from this, folks. Like:
- don’t take yourself too seriously
- appreciate what you have now
- don’t judge a book by it’s cover
- don’t follow every fashion trend, especially if you’re going to be photographed
Reuniting with pals (or even enemies) from the past isn’t only fun (and anthropologically fascinating), it gives you perspective. And that’s never a bad thing.
