30 Year High School Reunion

I'm reading about how you identify with different things. When these things disappoint us, we feel stress. Here in Cleveland Ohio we refer to Cleveland Browns Stadium as the "factory of sadness." The sports teams we identify with do not meet our needs, and we are stressed out watching them. So I got to hang out with my high school class 30 years after we graduated. At one point we did something new. We arranged people by the elementary school we attended. So there I was shoulder to shoulder with people I had know for most of my life. The little Hatton heroes. The Hatton school had recently been bulldozed along with all my childhood memories. Only to rebuild it in a more modern fashion. I remember us Hatton people as we prepared to go to Hyre junior high. We had gone from being the oldest at the elementary school to the youngest at the jr high. We made it Jr high. Then we ruled the School in 9th grade. Only to go to the high school, and put up with being the new kids again. But we worried but learned to drive together in a truck trailer that simulated driving on a giant screen. We watched our football team, and celebrate at McDonald's every Friday rain or shine. We raced to see who could make it around the bases of sex. We tossed our hats into the air together and sand the alma matter one last time and headed off to graduation parties, and plans of college, work, and future. We swore we'd keep in touch. Some of us did. Most of us didn't However, that doesn't mean we don't have that connection. We traded that connection for homework, and jobs, and more tests, and degrees. And spouses, and children,. And once every five or so years we get together to see how much weight we've gained, hair we've lost. We look across the dinner table and someone who knows what its like to be us. We remember how awesome Deanna's Sebeny Vargo's -laugh is. It was weird. Our kids are now our age when most of use connected. We looked like out parents. Slightly gray, slightly overweight. And we worry together about our kids, and in some cases, grandchildren, great nieces and nephews. its nice to be around a group of like minded people. Who call the tree lawn the devil strip. Who know what its like to bleed orange and white. We worried about leaving elementary school, and then JR High, High School, who take take to the dance, if we would win the big game, pass the test, live through the break up, what college to attend, how to plan the wedding, how to raise the kids, and now as we plow into middle age, we will start to ponder the thought of staying off "the list."