Reunion (Of The Snake Is On The Climb!)*

I went to a mini-reunion with my high school classmates last night. Two of our classmates were in town for that rare, once-every-several-years visit to the homeland for the holidays, so it was a perfect excuse to get together.

We noticed that whenever we have these reunions, we inevitably bring up the same stories and the same jokes. It can’t be helped; as we grow older, we grow closer with some and apart with most. While we do update each other with where we are now, it’s the back-stories and the shared past that bind us still; or rather, they almost surely are the default binders. Our future can push us even further apart; if our present efforts aren’t enough to bind us together, then we’ll always have the past as a comfortable crutch.

But yes, it is just a crutch, because people do move on. There are those who, for one reason or another, cut themselves off from their past (usually they’re the ones who don’t attend reunions). There are those whose present is so dramatically different from their past that the latter is rendered obsolete. And then there are those who are presently rewriting their past.

Happily, the people who were there last night had no major problems with their past, busy with their present, and still eager to create a better future for themselves and their loved ones. Surprisingly, the old jokes cropped up just as we were about to end the night. I guess old stories and old jokes really do get old.

Even as a group, we’re making our present our future past.

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*(If you got that reference, you ARE a child of the 80s.)