I had no intention of attending my high school reunion. Like, from the moment I graduated. My reasoning was that I had hardly been there during my junior and senior years because I was working half-days at my cooperative learning job.

I didn't see those people then, so why did I need to see them a decade later? I didn't. I had even lost touch with my best friend from junior high and high school. |

I did feel bad about that, so I hunted her down about a year before our reunion, and we vowed to stay in touch. And when we started hearing plans about the 10-year reunion, she asked, “Are you going?”

“Hell no, I'm not going,” I said.

“Well, I'm thinking about going,” she said from Baltimore.

So I figured if she could fly in from Maryland, certainly I could drive from San Antonio to Houston.

“I'll go if you go,” we agreed, as if we were still teenagers making a pact to attend the spring dance.

The reunion was a two-day affair with options: Family picnic, pre-reunion happy hour on Friday and actual reunion on Saturday.
It was like we had never left high school. Except half the girls at our table were expecting and about to pop. A couple of the guys invited us up to their hotel rooms where they had stockpiled liquor to avoid paying at the cash bar. And most people stuck to the group or clique they had always hung out with.

Overall, it blew my mind to see people I didn't even remember going to school with.

I'm glad I went, though, because I have since run into alums all over Texas. I've reconnected with a few of them, and we have reminisced, “Remember when we saw so-and-so at the reunion? Ewww.”

And the most fun was when my friend and I dragged out the yearbooks to compare photos with real-life thirtysomethings. Ewww.