Tonight was the raison d’être for our being in El Segundo this week: my high school “Medicare Eligible” Reunion, held at the El Segundo Fish Company (yet another of the 129 restaurants that now grace the town, according to TripAdvisor). Patrick, Cheryl, and I arrived shortly after 6pm and got our name tags:

I’ve been to 3 or 4 previous reunions, and I am always surprised by how easy it is to recognize my classmates, given how much we’ve changed physically in almost 50 years. Some I know instantly, like Lynne & Chris.

Others I can observe for a moment and then know by the tilt of a head or a laugh or the smile, like Susan.

Some I see regularly, like Nancy.

And then there are some whom I can’t place until I glance at the name tag, but then immediately the 17-year-old emerges from and melds with the older person in front of me, and then I know that person too.

It helps that there were just over 200 in our graduating class, and that, after joining from 3 elementary schools, we were all together in junior high and high school for six years. Not only that but, being baby boomers, most of us came from families of 3, 4, or more kids, and our families were known to one another through PTA, Little League, scouts, church, etc. I went through school as “Steve-I-mean-Mike-I-mean-Carol.” No offense meant, none taken – it was the water we swam in.

Like I suppose at all reunions, we mostly talked and drank and ate for hours. At one point I realized that I was feeling bashful about talking to one certain person, who was the boy I liked from 4th grade up until high school. It seemed to me that there was a sort of understanding between us at least for several years in elementary school – based mainly on the fact that when we went to the cafeteria for square dancing, he would pick me for his partner, and that when we did classroom projects, we would team up. I’m pretty sure we never actually held any sort of personal conversation (rendering unlikely my fantasy that he would ask me to go steady), but still I thought there was something special there.

So to get rid of this annoying bashful feeling, I went up to him and said: this is really awkward for me, but I have to ask you – I’ve always been under the impression that when we were kids, there was a sort of a thing between us. Did I imagine that, or was there something going on on your side as well? He said: no, you didn’t imagine it at all, it was entirely mutual. I’ve always wondered, and now I know. How satisfying! Later I sat with him and his wife and we ruminated a bit about why we never did anything about it when we were old enough to date. He said that we just started dating other people, and I think what actually happened was that I was dating older boys and he was dating younger girls, as so often happens.

Very excellent reunion in all respects!