Class of 1987

This year I have been out of high school for 30 years. I had the opportunity to meet with some of my classmates from the class of 1987 last weekend at a fellow classmate's house. It was Girard's reunion weekend and this was a casual get together. But another fellow classmate brought his band, so it was a great casual get together with great music! Why is it so fun to visit with people from your past?

There really is something to the feeling you have around the people that you've known the longest. In the case of a high school reunion, it doesn't matter after 30 years how well you knew each other back then, you have ONE thing in common that gives you mutual interest in seeing each other happy, healthy, and doing well: you started out in the same place together. We all launched our adult lives from the same place. It really is a family of sort.

I didn't get any pictures, myself, but someone took this one of a few of us when we were looking at our senior yearbook. There were 79 of us in the class of 1987. We have only lost a couple in the past 30 years, so that is a pretty good thing!

Troy and I started dating the same year I graduated. Again, 30 years ago. 

We were baby adults, that's how I look at it today. I feel like that gives our marriage an advantage in the "will it last?" department. Why? 

Well, have you ever said to someone "I am really surprised the two of you are such good friends, you don't seem to have anything in common." And they responded with "Yeah, well, we were raised together, so....."

That's it. That's often all it takes to form a really strong bond. 

Sometimes Troy will start to tell me a story about when he was young, which I have already heard, of course. And I will remind him that we have lived MOST of our 50 year and 48 year lives together and I have had 30 years to hear the stories about the first 20 years.

When you've known somebody for that long, grown up with them in a sense, they get a free pass on a lot of aggravation you don't put up with from your more recently formed relationships. It's just the way it is. There is an investment there that you don't walk away from.

The older you get, the more important relationships become. If you get a chance to visit with someone who knew you back when, don't pass it up. Never let the notion that you won't have much in common set in. You already have enough in common to give you a warm, fuzzy feeling when you get to talking, guaranteed!