The feelings I had about the reunion are starting to fade a little now, but I know it made a huge difference to me. And I noticed that a lot of what I’m saying here seems shallow with too much emphasis on looks/appearance.
Blame it on living in Southern California where it’s all about how you look and also things that were expected of me by my mother, starting at a very young age.
On the evening of the reunion, Terry and I checked into the hotel, had a something to eat, changed and went looking for the ballroom. I entered first, looked around and said to Terry, “We’re in the wrong place…..there’s a bunch of really old people in there.”
I was wrong……this was the right place and they were all my age.
Holy cow! How could that be? There were more bald heads than I could count and an ocean of grey hair.
But I got brave and started to walk around, mingle and realized I wasn’t the only one who didn’t recognize anyone. We all wore lanyards w/our name and senior picture……and each time, I walked up to someone, I grabbed their picture and was delighted to see that person. They had to check mine too so I guess I have changed also. Just because we still feel young in our heads doesn’t mean that’s reality. :)
Except for a small group of girls (old women, hee, hee) we all chatted and enjoyed each other. There were no longer any divisions of Cool Kids and Uncool Kids……In fact, I had a better time with those I barely knew. I was never in a Cool Kid group, nor the Uncool Kids. I just had a lot of friends in every group….even some who were definitely not Cool.
So, except for that small group of “girls” who stayed seated together as tho they expected the rest of us to request an audience with them, everyone was friendly, kind, interested and interesting. I had just the very best time.
It seemed so strange to me that a couple of “those girls” looked straight thru me, like I didn’t exist when I approached The Royal Circle. I was really surprised that at this age, they would still be acting that way. What’s wrong with them??? Personally, I found that so many of the Uncool were the most interesting with great stories to tell about their life.
I’m going to say it even if I shouldn’t but I looked damn good that night….and I knew it. I’m lucky to have great genes and most of the people in my family, even way back, never look their age. I had just gone back to dark brown hair ( what I was born with) for the first time in 35 yrs. I went grey in my 20s and blond was easy. Recently I had began to notice that my face and hair all started to blend together, like one pale color and I didn’t like it. And I’m a big fan of “Change.” I saw a lot of women who had become blond for the same reason that night. So I was glad I had made the change.
And I knew that I looked like someone who took care of themselves….I’m also a pro at disguising the middle age spread if I want to….mostly, I don’t want to.
I learned that I will never look in the mirror and curse my wrinkles and sags ever again (well, maybe once in awhile). I need to fully realize how lucky I am in the aging department and stop complaining. I learned that no one cares anymore what you look like but they will remember if you are kind, happy and interested in others.
I had a feeling of coming full circle, remembering who these people were then and how far so many have gone in life…..like one man who was considered a dweeby, skinny guy with thick glasses turned out to be a very decorated police captain…..An extremely over-weight, super shy girl became a slender knock-out of a woman with a very successful career.
I realize how shallow this sounds and everything I say I “learned,” I already “knew.” But did I really know it??? Did I apply that in my day to day life? Sometimes it needs to really hit you in the face to be able to say “A-ha! I get it now.”
I realized that even the not-so-great things that happen as you age, like those nasty wrinkles, grey hair, middle age spread, lack of energy, etc...... that it’s darn good to be old. All those silly things that we think are important when young, are not important at all. The things that used to drive us into a rage, don’t bother us anymore. We have a lot more patience, tolerance and the ability to distinguish between what’s important and what’s not. We have learned how to identify those who care about us and those who pretend to care about us. We know now how not to waste our time with silly stuff and manage our life so that what we do is what we most want to do. During our long lives, we learned how to make good choices from making so many bad choices. And it doesn’t take us forever to know the difference or to stress about it unnecessarily. And if we do mess up, there’s very little angst like before. We know (and hope) that tomorrow will come and all the stress and worry was a silly thing to do. And after everything is all said and done, it’s the love of family, dear friends and actively being kind and interested in others that really, really matters. ( and dogs!)
I know that I’m not saying anything world-shattering or of great importance. I know that I “knew” all this but it just really hit home because of the reunion. I found myself really caring about so many people that I never took the time to get to know in high school…..mostly due to my shyness than any judgment of them. Which makes me determined that even now, when I feel that old shyness start to raise its ugly head, I need to push it back down and think about the other people instead of myself and my needs. Shyness is really a very self-centered thing.
This is starting to sound like a sermon and maybe I needed to give myself a sermon. And I wanted/needed to write this down, keep it and re-read it from time to time.
Loading comments...