Life — or Something Like It

This has been a very unusual week for me.

If you read my blog on a somewhat regular basis, you’ve probably read my entries about my 30th anniversary high school reunion, which was held in my hometown in central Arkansas last weekend. You also know I wasn’t able to attend the reunion.

But I feel as if I have attended — in a way. One of my classmates e-mailed a class web address to me, and another classmate e-mailed the contact list that was compiled at the reunion itself.

From the information I’ve picked up from those two sources, I’ve been able to send e-mails to several of my classmates, and I’ve heard back from some of them already.

I’m getting caught up on the news from some long lost friends — how many children they have, which ones are grandparents now, etc. It would have been great to see them (maybe someone will post some pictures!), but communicating with them really is the next best thing to being there, I guess.

Some of them have done me the honor of visiting this blog and reading what I’ve been writing lately. I guess they remember things I wrote for the high school newspaper — when I was young and wordy!

Well, I've got a news flash — I'm not young anymore! (But I can still be wordy at times.)

Anyway, I hope they enjoy what they read here. And I look forward to their input.

I haven’t seen many of my classmates since the fifth anniversary reunion in 1983. Obviously, a lot has happened in 25 years. For me, it’s almost as if it’s all happening now.

It’s kind of a strange sensation.

For example, I heard from one of my classmates who married another one of my classmates. They became parents for the first time 25 years ago. Offhand, I don’t remember if their baby had already been born or if they were still expecting him when I saw them in 1983 — but, in the years that have passed, they added three daughters to their family tree. Four children in all.

I just found out about all that this week — to me, it seems like their little family exploded overnight. But, like everything else, it was a product of time. I just wasn’t there to see it all happen.

Three of their children are in their 20s now — old enough to have graduated from the same high school their parents and I attended three decades ago — and my friends have one grandson.

I e-mailed a picture of my goddaughter to another old friend, and my friend e-mailed a photo of her three daughters to me. I remarked that one of her daughters bears a striking resemblance to her when she was a teenager.

Life’s rich pageant has been coming to me through my e-mail’s inbox this week.

I also learned this week that the mother of two of my classmates (who were my closest playmates in elementary school) passed away last year.

I don’t know much more than that. I don’t know if she had been ill prior to her death or if it was one of those things that happened suddenly. Judging from what I assume was her age when her sons and I were children, I guess she was in her late 70s.

But, in my mind’s eye, she’ll always be who she was when I was 7 or 8 years old and I had dinner at their house or spent the night. For however long I was in the house, she was my surrogate mother.

She was always very nice to me — she treated me like one of the family, and she expected me to follow the rules. I expected no less.

And, until this week, she was still alive in my mind’s eye — even though, in reality, she’s been gone for more than a year.

In a more immediate sense, I learned that an old friend of the family died this afternoon.

I don’t know what his cause of death was, but he was in his 80s and he had polio when he was a child so I suppose, under those circumstances, even something that might be handled routinely by a younger, healthy person could be too much for an older, compromised immune system.

But I’ve known this man all my life. In fact, there wasn’t a time when I didn’t know him. He and his wife were friends of my mother, originally, and they were there for our family in our darkest days. I’ll always be grateful for that, but I didn’t see much of him in the last year of his life. I think the last time I saw him was at Christmas.

But I will be attending his funeral on Monday.

Life marches on.

Going Home Again

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"In my little town, I never meant nothin'
I was just my father's son,
Saving my money, dreaming of glory,
Twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun."

Simon and Garfunkel, "My Little Town" (1975)

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Thomas Wolfe wrote a famous novel titled "You Can't Go Home Again."

Whether that assertion is true, the line has been used by many people to describe their attempts to revisit their youth.

I guess the title of Mr. Wolfe's novel (which was published after his untimely death at the age of 37) was valid.

All the same, my high school class held its 30th anniversary reunion in my hometown in central Arkansas this weekend.

And high school reunions are proof that one can go home again — if only for a few hours.

I would have liked to attend, but circumstances prevented me from doing so.

I hope attendance was good and that everyone who was there had a great time.

I attended our fifth anniversary reunion in 1983. At that point, many members of my class were becoming parents for the first time. Twenty-five years later, I'm sure there are members of my class who have advanced to the next phase of their lives — in which their children have married and are having children of their own.

As I recall, attendance at the reunion in 1983 was pretty good, although it probably could have been better.

For some members of my class, this weekend may have been the first time they've been back in town in a long time. If it was, they had a few surprises waiting for them.

The population of my hometown has exploded. When I was a little boy, there were fewer than 10,000 people living there.

The population had grown to around 20,000 by the time my high school class graduated — but, today, the population is more than 50,000, and my hometown is now the seventh-largest city in the state.

My hometown is now larger than some cities that seemed huge by comparison when I was a teenager.

When my high school class was still in high school, there was only one high school campus. But today, the town's population has grown so much that they've had to divide the high school into two campuses (the "East Campus" serves the ninth and 10th grades, the "West Campus" serves the 11th and 12th grades).

And there are some members of my class who are no longer with us — I know of two of my classmates who have died in the last six weeks, and I've heard of others over the years, although I'm sure there are a few I haven't heard about.

The reunion would have been a good chance to get caught up on what's happened to the members of my class.

That's really the point.

You can't "go home again" if what you seek to accomplish is to return to the way things used to be. But you can go home again if all you're trying to do is get reacquainted with some old friends, find out what's happened with everyone and share a few memories.

I don't think I would want to be 18 again! But I'm sorry I couldn't go home for the weekend.

I'll Admit It — These Are Random Thoughts

It's a hot, stuffy July night in Dallas, Texas. And my thoughts are like fireflies, darting from one spot to the next with little warning:

• I was reading an article in the Washington Post that was discussing a couple of the hottest names being tossed around lately for Democratic running mate.
  
  They are Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia.
  
  Both men are from so-called "red states" that are presently predicted to remain in the Republican column in November.
  
  But the feeling is that either state could flip sides — especially if a native son had a spot on the ticket with Barack Obama.
  
  Obama has no executive experience so a vice presidential candidate with a background as a governor would be helpful to his ticket. Bayh brings that to the table — he was governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997.
  
  In 1998, he was elected to the Senate, winning the seat his father, Birch Bayh, held for three terms.
  
  Evan Bayh received 64% of the vote in 1998 when he was elected to the Senate, the greatest victory margin ever for a Democrat in a U.S. Senate race in Indiana.
  
  I remember his father. And, in spite of the elder Bayh's accomplishments, I have to wonder about the wisdom of putting someone with his political genetic makeup on the ticket.
  
  The elder Bayh had been in the Senate for 18 years when he ran for his fourth term in 1980. Now, I know 1980 was a Republican year, but Birch Bayh lost to Dan Quayle — after debating him several times.
  
  Quayle, who was never known as a great debater, went on to be elected vice president with George H.W. Bush eight years later — after Quayle had been reminded by Lloyd Bentsen that he was "no Jack Kennedy."
  
  Of the other prospect — Sam Nunn — well, he'll be 70 years old before Election Day. Won't that kind of negate the age problem John McCain's been having?
  
  Also, how does Nunn fit in to the image the Obama campaign likes to project about how this campaign is a break with the past? I've been hearing Nunn's name mentioned as a vice presidential possibility for a couple of decades now.
  
  And he's clearly a part of the "old politics" in Washington. He was elected to the Senate in 1972 and he retired in 1997.
  
  Nunn was only 58 when he retired — many analysts have said the Democratic Party's "shift to the left" led him to leave public service.
  
  I've heard rumors that Obama will announce his decision before the start of the Summer Olympics in Beijing on August 8. I hope he comes up with a better choice.


• While we're on the subject of the vice presidency, The Economist mentions — albeit briefly — a subject that has been discussed tentatively on both sides — picking a running mate from the other party.
  
  It's not as outlandish as it sounds. It has been done before — and successfully — by no less than Abraham Lincoln, the Republican president who was re-elected with Democrat Andrew Johnson on his ticket. (Of course, let's not forget that Johnson became president when Lincoln was assassinated and then became the first president to be impeached.)
  
  And the vice presidential prospects make sense — to a point. Especially if the objective is to appeal to voters from the other party. But not particularly if you want to strengthen your own party's base — except on the issue of the war.
  
  For McCain, the prospect from the other party is Sen. Joe LIeberman — the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, as well as Al Gore's running mate eight years ago. "The senators are seen so often in each other’s company that they might be Siamese twins," says The Economist. But, aside from Lieberman's support for the Iraq War, there isn't much for a garden variety Republican to like about him.
  
  For Obama, the prospect is Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran who has been a very vocal critic of the Iraq War. But, like Lieberman, Hagel brings a voting record on social and economic issues that wouldn't necessarily appeal to most people outside his party.
  
  The Economist advises both McCain and Obama to "err on the side of caution." I'm inclined to agree.


• Back in March, when Brett Favre retired, I was saddened to hear the news, even though it was something I had been expecting for awhile.
  
  This week, with the news reports that Favre wanted to return to action, I guess I've grown accustomed to the idea that his career is finally over.
  
  As a Packer fan, I'm not looking forward to the losses that I believe will come in the early stages of the "post-Favre era," but I'm prepared for them.
  
  It's a part of the natural cycle. Teams struggle when their star player retires, whatever the sport may be.
  
  As much as it pains me to say it, it's time for the Packers to move into their future, and it's time for Favre to move into his.


• I recently learned that my high school class will be holding its 30-year reunion in another week.
  
  I won't be able to attend, but I wish I could. I know that a couple of my classmates have died recently, and it would be good to be able to see the ones who are still around and find some comfort from being with them for a few hours.
  
  Life, as George Carlin was fond of saying, "is a zero sum game."
  
  (By the way, my high school class graduation was held on Carlin's 41st birthday.)