Well shit.
When two different people email you wondering where you are, maybe it's time to show your grubby face.
Where have I been? Nowhere special. I've been carrying on with my life. I haven't intentionally been ignoring The Cellar, I just kind of stopped visiting. No particular reason. I probably needed a break--there were fewer and fewer threads that piqued my interest and more and more posts.
So what have I been up to? I would say there were three momentous events of the summer.
First there was a vacation to Boston, where we saw the Boston Pops on July 4. Here's a photo of Aerosmith on stage.
Second, there has been a job search. I'm currently on the medium list for a job at a university that would require relocation to a different city. It is exciting and terrifying at once. Friday I should learn if I'm worthy of the short list.
Finally, I'm going to get all gushy... a rare occurence.
This past weekend I attended my high school reunion. My graduating class has always been somewhat close-knit. And this 20 year reunion was really special. Going to this reunion was in many ways like coming back to the US after spending several years in a foreign country and being back among your family, friends, and those who speak your language.
You see, this was a public boarding school for "academically talented" 11th and 12th graders. We spent two whole years together, away from our families, in something of an academic pressure cooker. And while it seemed normal at the time, advancing age (and parenthood) have given me a greater appreciation of how gut-wrenching a step this really was. So it is, perhaps, no wonder that we all developed a special camaraderie. (Except that it doesn't seem to have happened as much for the other classes.)
Fast-forward 20 years. It was just amazing to see what everybody had turned into. (Even though at least some of us had seen each other at past reunions.) I can't imagine a more wonderful bunch of people. It was a time not only to renew old friendships, but also to discover that people you hadn't known well, or maybe hadn't liked, were actually nice, interesting, and fun. It was astounding to see the blurring of the cliquishness that had sometimes characterized the school's social life.
There was one other aspect of the weekend that made it extra memorable: the slide shows. You see, back in the early days of the school (it was started in the early 1980s) the art teacher got together some students before Christmas and put together a slide show from photos taken during the semester. It was fairly high-tech for the time (three slide projectors, with click track synchronized soundtracks). It was such a hit that a slide show has been produced for every semester since.
Well, so what? At each of the past reunions the year-end slide show from our senior year was shown. So we had seen it before a couple times. But we had not seen the year end show from our junior year. And nobody, literally nobody, had seen the two Christmas slide shows that had been shown once and boxed up in a closet somewhere. All these were restored, cleaned, fixed up, and digitized. And they were shown for the first time in twenty years.
It's difficult for me to describe the emotional impact these slide shows had on us as we saw long-forgotten people and events after so long. So I won't. But the whole business left me with a great deal to think about regarding my past life, my education, and the friendships I made or failed to make. I don't wish to belittle my universities, my various jobs, or my family, all of which I am truly blessed by. But it is increasingly obvious that my time at this school was truly "the best years of my life." It was both inspiring and painful to revisit these people and these experiences.
