Now That's Happy, Baby!

This was a pretty good few weeks for me. I attended by 20th anniversary high school reunion, and I turned 30 years old!


Originally, I had decided that I would only attend my 10th reunion and never look back. However, I saw on facebook that it was getting put together, and I figured, what the heck. It stunk that my lady was out of town that weekend because she was teaching some Broadway seminars in Boston, but I'd proudly tell everyone about her. Ironically, her absence was a small blessing in disguise, because she would have had the awkward situation of meeting up with one of my classmates she dated 10 years ago! LOL

But why was I really looking to go there? I wasn't captain of the football team back then, and I sure wasn't a stud or a player. Why go see people 20 years later? Maybe just an opportunity for friendship and respect.

You see, I've done very well since those old days. It made me feel proud to go there and tell people that I'd become an attorney, that I'd run the NYC Marathon several times, and that I had recently gotten married. Quite frankly, I've reached a point in my life where I deserve respect, and it felt good to receive it, especially from those who didn't always give me respect back then.

But enough about me, I'm not just an ego trip! I was also happy to see how well everyone else was doing. My 9th grade crush? She'd landed a great job, still had tons of friends, and had a son who had made her very proud! The class present, most-likely-to guy? He did what he was most-likely-to do! He founded his own company, made a name for himself in educational software, and had a family out west! On top of that, people I almost never spoke to back in the 80's were hangin' out with me the whole time, and it just felt right!

Although we are each responsible for our own feelings of self-worth and whether we have low or high self-esteem, sometimes it's good to have a little reinforcement. No man is an island, after all. Attending a reunion as proof-positive that you're a better person now than you were then is one sure-fire way to reinforce what you're all about!

Quite frankly, that makes me want to make more time for the friends that I still talk to on a regular basis. Since I've moved here to the city with my wife, it's been a bit harder to come out to my old hometown to see a few friends and relatives, but I'm going to make a lot more time for it. Now that I've discovered the magic of Zipcar, I don't really have to depend on mass transit all the time, and I really can just get some wheels to drive out east any time I feel like it! That goes for my friend's family, including my godson and the Queen, my dawwwwwling Sista, and my grandmother, the Nanster! LOL, yes there are nicknames for most of them, my terms of affection, and one day I'm gonna have more of them come over here to see our place!

Oh well -- next week my wife will have the same opportunity. We're going to upstate NY to her old college town for a reunion up there, and we're gonna have a fine time!