I’m afraid there’s been a serious mistake.
The other day I got an invitation. It was for a 50th high school reunion.
Surely it was supposed to go to someone else. I’ve only been out of high school a few years. Ten, maybe. Twenty, possibly. But 50? I don’t think so.
Someone has surely hit the fast-forward button on the time machine.
I looked at the invitation, which came by way of a friend I had just talked with a few years ago.
Or so it seems.
Just to verify that it was in fact a mistake, I tracked down a Facebook page for Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. To my relief, it was a mistake. The only photos I saw were of old people. Lots of gray hair – and missing hair on the guys. Everyone I knew in high school had lots of hair.
And there were grandchildren in the pictures, too.
I’m way too young for grandkids, so what are my alleged classmates doing with them?
Again, it’s all a big, whopping mistake.
I suppose I ought to verify whether this class reunion is for some other folks who are way older. As a check, there are a few facts only I and a select few witnesses would recall about my high school years.
For example, when I was in tenth grade I was proudly showing off my latest innovation. It involved splicing two huge speaker cabinets into a tiny portable record player. When I turned it on, it worked great – until it caught fire. The lone witness probably would remember it – because she was laughing so hard.
Then there was the time I and another member of the school electronics club climbed onto the roof of the school. (Apparently, setting your record player on fire did not exclude you from the club.) Our goal wasn’t setting up any electronic gizmo. It was to get in a quick game of horseshoes before the next class. We each had a couple loops of wire and we used the plumbing vents as stakes. A couple of kids saw us and reported it to a teacher, who dismissed the idea of upstanding students like us playing horseshoes on the roof.
Then there was the time a couple of us rode our bicycles 30 miles to Washington Crossing State Park by the Delaware River. The only shortcoming in our planning was: no food, no money to buy food, no sleeping bags and no campground to sleep in. We spent the night shivering in a cemetery.
There were plenty of other secret undertakings that took place in high school, like the kid – not me – who blew up his coat in chemistry class. I’m not sure what he planned to do with those chemicals, but they sure made a lot of smoke when they were mixed in his pocket.
I won’t get into the other ones, because, well, sometimes the past is best forgotten. But there was the time I was laughing so hard I fell out of a car. That was bad enough, but I was driving.
I won’t tell you what happened after that. It’s a secret.
Carl Sampson is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in Stayton.
