Life Happened...Part I

I saw the rest of my old friends
At our reunion at the Holiday Inn
And it seemed like it was only yesterday
Standing in the gym in our cap and gown
Full of wonderlust and glory bound

We set out to chase our dreams on wings of passion
But somewhere along the way we got distracted
Life happened

Our clothes went out of fashion with our songs
We started families and bought SUV's
Became step dads and soccer moms
I finally realized we turned alright
And we spent the night just catching up and dancing
And life happened

--Tammy Cochran "Life happened"

I can't help but get nostalgic about my own high school days and friends whenever that song comes on the radio or my Ipod. Over the years, I have joined several reconnecting sites like reunion.com or classmates.com and have gotten notes from a couple of people that I knew back when. The big problem is that they have had various costs and premium services to actually connect. The other problem was there was no online interaction between people. I sent a message out in April, the Recipient picked it up in February of the next year.

Then comes FaceBook, which until recently had been geared to the current high schoolers and college students (along with MySpace). I joined FaceBook last fall mainly to keep up with my own kids and my nieces and nephews ('phews as I call them--feel free to use it, I hope it catches on). I've slowly added friends and other relatives over the past months, mostly my kids friends--because obviously they've been at this for years, and why not--I like most of them and care about them and want to keep up with them too. Along the way, I've also come across people in my adult life.

I graduated from William Penn High School
in 1974 which if my math is still correct was 35 years ago. We had a class of nearly 500 people. Some I have been in contact with here and there over the years. At one point I had moved into a house across the street from one of my classmates. I've also been back for two reunions, the 10 and 15, and so far as I know we haven't had a reunion in the past 20 years.

Now all of a sudden, I am reconnecting with people I used to know on Facebook, bringing back many memories, mostly good, from the high school days. More and more people seem to be signing up for Facebook, and I hope to at least meet up with people virtually over time, as we reconnect.

Somewhere along the way we got to be 50 year olds, but over all it's been a very gruntling experience!

And one more thing: My clothes in high school were NEVER in fashion! :-)