The Summer of ‘71
I received an email yesterday from a fellow that was the valedictorian of our 1971 high school graduating class. As could be predicted, he has gone on to incredible intellectual achievement. Now, what is utterly amazing to me is that we have had absolutely no contact with each other for (wait for it!) 35 years! I am waiting to hear back from him as to what’s up. His email was simply to determine if I was indeed the person that attended school with him. Maybe he’s in charge of organizing the 35th class reunion - which seems highly improbable since my class has never had one. That I find his email extraordinary amazes me in and of itself. In this day and age, finding someone is not that difficult. Maybe it’s the fact that he even bothered. Or maybe it’s like opening a long-sealed door. High school was not a particularly rosy period of my life - in fact, quite the opposite. And yet, there is something about those childhood connections that stay with us forever. We think we’ve grown up, gone on, made something of our lives - and yet there is this child inside of us that still exists. I imagine that Deepak Chopra would say something profound and convoluted (that you can’t make any sense of) about Essence of Being, Truth and the quantum-mechanical universe.
How is it possible that it has been 35 years since graduating high school? My husband has this joke that he likes repeating often: inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. I maintain that I’m not old - and Denial is not a river in Egypt.
ALL THINGS WITH EXUBERANCE!
mary!
