Looking Ahead to My 50th High School Class Reunion

Okay, so I'm 67 years old and I've watched and enjoyed both High School Musical movies on the Disney Channel-although I liked the first movie better than the second. What I liked best about both movies was the sense of being part of something that I never felt when I was in high school in little (population 2500) Lake City, Iowa, graduating class of 1958.

Next summer, 2008, barring any serious problems, I will attend my 50th high school class reunion and, like most of the reunions I've attended, it will be in Lake City, and being in the town will bring back memories-good and bad.

I've attended most of the class reunions. Our first one was ten years after we graduated; the rest have been at five year intervals. I remember in those early reunions how my mood would change into one of almost fear and shyness the closer my wife and I got to Lake City. I had been very shy in high school. I never dated. I wasn't unpopular, but I wasn't popular, either. I was just there. I had a few friends, but I was socially not very active.

Coming back to Lake City always reminded me of what I had been and made it difficult for me to see and appreciate what I had become. I had moved out of my shyness, had become a minister who preached and taught every Sunday, and had met and married a wonderful woman I met during my seminary days. The problem was that most of my friends from high school hadn't gone with me through those changes. I was, in many ways, the same guy they had known in high school.

I'm probably not being fair to them. I don't know what they went through during their time in high school. I don't know how they saw themselves and I certainly don't know how they saw me. I assumed certain things and responded to my assumptions.

As I've grown older, I've noticed something on the part of my classmates: they seem to have mellowed and grown more open to each other and to me. My 45th reunion was actually a very pleasant experience as I was able to relate well to people-girls in particular-who were definitely not in my circle of friends at Lake City High School. Perhaps we've all moved beyond the need to establish our positions and reputations and have arrived at the point where we realize that no matter how differently life may begin for all of us, it becomes the same as far as the basics of relationships, work, and approaching death are concerned. From my class of 47 members, we've already lost at least seven to death. To quote a line from High School Musical 2, we're all in this together.

So, was my high school like East High in the High School Musical movies? After watching one of the movies, my wife said it looked like you had to be able to sing and dance in order to go to East High! Well, I couldn't sing all that well in high school and I only could dance well enough to move around clumsily on the dance floor with a girl. There were those, however, who did sing and dance well. As I look more closely at the movies, however, I also see that there are cliques and there are people who don't relate well to each other. That describes Lake City High School-and probably every high school in the land-and that's just how it is and will probably always be.

One more thing: whatever relationship barriers there were in high school, they are crumbling as my classmates and I grow older. In small ways, we are approaching the openness and fun of being with each other-the kind of atmosphere that seems to be at the heart of High School Musical and High School Musical 2.

If the Lake City High School Class of 1958 has accomplished nothing else in nearly 50 years, it has at least accomplished that!