From seniors to senior citizens

I am a member of the Rock Island High School Class of 1972. Rocky, for short. Home of the Rocks. Our mascot was, and still is, a large rock that sits outside the fieldhouse. If you do the math, you realize it has been 45 years since my graduation, and it was time for a reunion.

I had not been to a high school reunion since my 10th. So before my 45th, I studied my yearbook, searched for classmates on Facebook, and googled their names on the internet. Okay, so I stalked them. But I wanted to remember as much as I could about my 700+ classmates then and learn as much as I could about them now before the reunion. What I discovered, besides that most of them are not on social media, is that they had all gotten old. Some had more, um, laugh lines then I remembered. Some had gray hair – if they still had hair. And a few that we would have called beefcake back in the day now looked more cake than beef. I would not have recognized most of them if they knocked on my door. 

Then I looked at my own yearbook photo and realized that girl doesn’t exist anymore, either. I have gained weight, lost hair, and I can play connect-the-dots with my age spots. I thought if I could pull my face back all evening to smooth out my skin, maybe someone would see me hiding under all the wrinkles. Then, in honor of my reunion, I grew a giant pimple on my chin. Well, one of my chins. This, I thought, could actually help my classmates recognize me. 

But all my research had not prepared me for the weekend ahead.

The first reunion activity I attended was a tour of the high school. I told my husband on the drive north that I honestly could not remember anything about the school itself except detention hall. Before you jump to conclusions, one detention was given for every ten tardies, and I could easily rack up ten tardies in a couple days. As soon as we drove up to the school, however, and especially when I stepped inside, the memories came rushing back. The crimson and gold, pep rallies, first-period 😝 swim PE, homeroom (which looked much smaller than I remembered), biology lab, art class (not my best subject), sleeping through economics (which came as no surprise to my banker husband) and, yes, detention hall which I learned on the tour was also the study hall – who knew?!?

This nostalgic walk through the halls was just the beginning of what would prove to be an emotional and reflective reunion weekend for me. And the main event was yet to come. I was nervous. What if I didn’t remember anyone? Or worse – what if no one remembered me? Had I been mean to anyone? Would the ones whom I thought had been mean to me be there? Would my high school boyfriend be there? Doubtful. He was never one for school and I was pretty sure he had not been to any reunions yet. We had a very large graduating class and I had only kept in close touch with one friend after we all graduated from college, got married and started new lives. Most of the other classmates that I was casual Facebook friends with had been to the 40th and were not planning to attend the 45th. I had heard that a little over 100 people were coming. What if I didn’t know anyone there? In a class of over 700, there could have easily been 100 people that I never knew. 

The first thing I thought when I entered the reunion ballroom was, well, maybe I shouldn’t have come. No familiar faces. No sign of recognition. We headed straight for the bar. I was going to need a glass of wine – or three – to get through this. Then, standing in front of me in line was one of my good friends in high school! I didn’t recognize her at first, but as soon as I saw her nametag I could see my friend in this stranger standing in front of me. And that’s how the rest of the night went. I didn’t recognize anyone until they told me who they were, and then it was so obvious! I felt like I was meeting them for the first time and I felt like I had just seen them yesterday.  Not everyone looked the way I expected them to look. Not everyone’s life had taken the path I had expected it would take. The evening was a simultaneous and surreal mix of the strange and the familiar. We reminisced about the way we were and we shared information about what we had become. And some people at the reunion I did not know well in high school. So I made new friends. 

Many classmates had stayed close to home while others had made their homes around the county and even beyond. Some friends were married to their high school sweethearts while many others had found spouses elsewhere or lost spouses to death or divorce. Many are still working while some have retired. Many have children and grandchildren (whoda thought?) and a few even have great-grandchildren. Some classmates are nowhere to be found. And maybe that’s the way they want it.

Not all of my classmates, however, had grown old. There are at least 41 people from our class who are no longer with us. Some I already knew had passed and others I was surprised when I heard their names read. How many more names will be read at the 50th? 

It’s been a couple weeks since the reunion, but it has taken me this long to process why seeing my classmates had such an impact on me. We had grown up together. Some of us had been together since junior high and even grade school. We had shared experiences we would never share with another person. We had discovered things about the world around us together. Together we had begun to plan our futures. Every classmate in the room that night and those who could not attend are a part of my past, my history. Each one has played a part, big or small, in the person I am today. We have all been molded, in part, by the events that occurred during our three years together in high school. 

But although we had grown up together, most of us had not grown old together. We were seniors when we walked those halls. Now we are senior citizens.

We have all lived so much life in these past 45 years. We have all been touched by disease, death, pain and sorrow. We have all known joy, life, love and happiness. We have all changed in so many ways. And we have remained unchanged in as many ways.

There were no personal computers when I was in high school. No internet. No cell phones. And no social media. (There was, in case you young’uns are wondering, electricity and running water.) When we graduated and went our separate ways, we really did just that. Now, in recent years, we have begun to reconnect on Facebook and Instagram. Through social media, I’ve learned that my classmates are republicans and democracts, conservatives and liberals, Christians and atheists, dog lovers and cat people, black and white and many colors in between. None of that came up in any of my conversations that night. Instead, we focused on what we had in common. We were Rock Island Rocks. We were all seniors in the largest class to graduate from Rocky High. We all became adults together. 

I will go back for the 50th – as long as my name is not added to the memorial list. I didn’t get to talk to half of the people who were at the 45th and hopefully, many of the other 500 or so classmates will be at the golden anniversary of our graduation. In the meantime, I will try harder to keep up with friends through social media. The internet really has made the world a much smaller place. In fact, Facebook is a little like a virtual reunion. There are the good friends that interact frequently. There are the long-lost friends who are excited to reconnect and catch up.  And there are the friends who don’t know each other very well and simply exchange a few pleasantries. I am excited to reconnect and catch up with classmates. It should make the 50th even more fun. As great as I think Facebook is, it can’t replace the face-to-face. 

Oh. And the high school boyfriend? He was there and it was good to see him. I was glad to see him well and happy and married to a lovely lady. Well, there was that little part of me that was disappointed he didn’t forever rue the day he let me go. 😉

During my three-day blast to the past, we also drove by my old house that I lived in for 17 years before leaving for college. My parents, now both deceased, and two older siblings moved into that house on the day I was born. We drove through the old neighborhood where I could suddenly remember the name of all my neighbors and childhood friends. I visited my favorite hangout and drove by where my dad had worked. Not everything in Rock Island is as I remembered it, however. I looked for the places I had worked while in high school, but sadly, both are no longer there. Before we left town, we attended the church where I grew up and where my husband and I were married. We happened to be there on the anniversary of my dad’s death, and the memories of life growing up in this church flooded over me. We even visited with the last surviving member of my parents’ group of church friends. 

It was a quiet ride back south as I relived all the highlights in my head. John Denver even came on the radio singing “take me home country road to the place I belong.” I smiled knowing my country road is now a two-way highway. 

~~ Cheryl Riley Hemmer 

Author: hemmerhaging

I am a wife of one man, mother of two sons and two daughters-in-law, and Pama to nine grandchildren. And I am a child of the one true God. View all posts by hemmerhaging