September 7th, 2009

Although I was able to reconnect with some wonderful people from my past this Labor Day weekend, my 30 year class reunion was not without its awkward moments. The most memorable of the awkward moments occurred when I was asked to read a note I had written in one of my former classmate’s yearbook. Alfonso was a foreign exchange student at Buena High School. He was charming and personable and is very much the same now. I began the brief not to him in his yearbook with “Dear Pancho.” I asked him if that had been his nickname back then. He told me I was the only one who called him that and I named him after Pancho Villa. He neither looks like Pancho Villa nor was he from Mexico. He’s from Columbia! Evidentially, I was some sort of low-rent Don Rickles at 17. Another awkward moment came when I touched base with someone I dated a bit my senior year. Given how badly I treated him then he would have had every right to be rude to me now, but Jeff Bess was gracious and kind and behaved better than I deserved. The reunion gave me the opportunity to thank certain people for the positive influence they had on my high school years. Karen Derr was always sweet and no matter how busy she was she would stop and ask me how I was doing. And she was sincere. So were Susan Trick, Steve Smith, Janet Helton, and Tom Fair. Hopefully I’ve arrived on the other side of this historic occasion with not only a list of awkward moments, but new friends – people I never want to lose touch with, people that will make me a better person. I want to develop deeper friendships with Tracy Brown, Kate May, Cathy Hougham, and Robyn Hammon. You can never have enough friends. A friend is someone who can watch twelve straight hours of the Cartoon Network Jonny-Quest-a-Thon without uttering one word then get up and leave and not even say good-bye to me. A good friend is someone who can keep a secret, someone who likes to eat real food and not just salads, someone who’ll let me store some of my personal effects at their place, no questions asked, someone who doesn’t judge my mood swings, no matter how extreme they get, and most important, someone who will jerk the pen out of my hand should I begin any note with “Dear Pancho”.