These are the best years...but those years were fun.

The party's over and I'm back at home. The whole 30th high school reunion was a fun diversion. I'm sure my daughters would have been interested in the spectacle of a room full of 48 year olds acting like teenagers, except with lots of alcohol. Or maybe I should say lots of legal alcohol. There was plenty of alcohol back in high school, so I heard. I think it's safe to say not a single person in the room got carded by the bartender. I myself stuck with club soda with lime.

Although my family moved a fair amount as I was growing up, we always moved within the same town. The result is that some of the folks in that room on Saturday night I have known since I was six years old. Yes, Brad, you were the best man when I married Mike on the playground at recess the spring of my first grade year. Thanks for the reminder. I don't think we got the marriage annulled before my family moved to the other side of town and I started attending Northview Elementary. A group of us former Northview Roadrunners gathered in a corner to take a photo and reminisce. I was saddened to learn that my elementary school crush was last seen in the county jail due to a DUI. I already knew that our classmate, Patty, had died of a brain tumor a long time ago. And another classmate, Kelly, died in a motorcycle accident - also a long time ago. But the rest of us seem to be surviving and even thriving.

I'm glad to be home again, back in my cocoon of everyday life. Glad that high school is not the end of life even though I distinctly remember wondering at 17 if it was all down hill after graduation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life is full of opportunities for redemption and make-overs and do-overs and making something of ones self. Thank God for that! And thanks for the memories, old friends.