Going to Peoria Central High School's Reunion After My Regrettable High School Years
My Peoria Central High School's class is holding its fiftieth reunion. It’s the first reunion it’s held, so I’m curious about my classmates’ post-graduate lives.
I never regretted never holding reunions. I do regret wasting my high school years. I matured late physically and emotionally, dated infrequently and awkwardly, and behaved clownishly and mischievously. Although I earned a letter in swimming, I never won a race.
I’ve attended Karen’s reunions at Ottawa Hills in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was a cheerleader, member of senior national honor society, and queen of service through her ultra-cool social clique. She always had an adoring boyfriend. Girls like her flabbergasted me.
Understandably I haven’t enjoyed hearing her classmates reminisce, but I have enjoyed getting to know three of her girlfriends and their husbands.
In July she’ll attend her fiftieth reunion. She marvels about revelations in emails on her class distribution list. She said, “I was so naïve. I had no idea about the stuff guys were doing.”
She’ll find out about stuff at my reunion, because she is chaperoning me. My shenanigans may show up in emails because they showed up in my yearbook, The Crest.
But when I filled out the questionnaire for our directory, my first pleasant memory was solving an extra-credit trigonometry problem for Miss Giles. The second was writing a report on General Sherman’s march to the sea.
I re-read my Crest and was pleasantly surprised that girls wrote notes saying I was fun to be with, if such comments can be trusted. Several hinted I should contact them if I stopped dating my sophomore girlfriend. Somehow I attended every girl-ask-boy dance with a different girl. Except the brief time I went steady, I never dated any of the others. Calling them was unthinkable.
My serious friends were four beer-drinking buddies. We cruised through Steak-N-Shake Drive-Ins and sped down side streets in games of chase, although only I crunched fenders three times.
In school I pulled attention-getting stunts, most notoriously through windows. After class I walked out one window, along a ledge, and back in another. In physics I capped a year of mischief by tossing a wastebasket out a third story window. That led to an investigation of the first-year physics teacher, Carl Horst, who fortunately stayed and earned teaching awards.
I won’t return without Karen. In college she asked me to a girl-ask-boy dance even though she knew I had a date. I called her back. And I distinctly remember being afraid that she would challenge me to behave better if I married her. She succeeded. She supported both my MBA and PhD, and modeled ways to serve the community.
She pulled shenanigans at college though. She stole the photograph of me in my swimsuit displayed in the gymnasium. She figures she earned it cheering me on while I swam my way into our college’s Athletic Hall of Fame. And I set faster records than my high school captain who set records at another college.
Karen should dazzle my classmates and snuff conversations about regrettable memories, while I learn what they celebrate about their fifty years.
I never regretted never holding reunions. I do regret wasting my high school years. I matured late physically and emotionally, dated infrequently and awkwardly, and behaved clownishly and mischievously. Although I earned a letter in swimming, I never won a race.
I’ve attended Karen’s reunions at Ottawa Hills in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was a cheerleader, member of senior national honor society, and queen of service through her ultra-cool social clique. She always had an adoring boyfriend. Girls like her flabbergasted me.
Understandably I haven’t enjoyed hearing her classmates reminisce, but I have enjoyed getting to know three of her girlfriends and their husbands.
In July she’ll attend her fiftieth reunion. She marvels about revelations in emails on her class distribution list. She said, “I was so naïve. I had no idea about the stuff guys were doing.”
She’ll find out about stuff at my reunion, because she is chaperoning me. My shenanigans may show up in emails because they showed up in my yearbook, The Crest.
But when I filled out the questionnaire for our directory, my first pleasant memory was solving an extra-credit trigonometry problem for Miss Giles. The second was writing a report on General Sherman’s march to the sea.
I re-read my Crest and was pleasantly surprised that girls wrote notes saying I was fun to be with, if such comments can be trusted. Several hinted I should contact them if I stopped dating my sophomore girlfriend. Somehow I attended every girl-ask-boy dance with a different girl. Except the brief time I went steady, I never dated any of the others. Calling them was unthinkable.
My serious friends were four beer-drinking buddies. We cruised through Steak-N-Shake Drive-Ins and sped down side streets in games of chase, although only I crunched fenders three times.
In school I pulled attention-getting stunts, most notoriously through windows. After class I walked out one window, along a ledge, and back in another. In physics I capped a year of mischief by tossing a wastebasket out a third story window. That led to an investigation of the first-year physics teacher, Carl Horst, who fortunately stayed and earned teaching awards.
I won’t return without Karen. In college she asked me to a girl-ask-boy dance even though she knew I had a date. I called her back. And I distinctly remember being afraid that she would challenge me to behave better if I married her. She succeeded. She supported both my MBA and PhD, and modeled ways to serve the community.
She pulled shenanigans at college though. She stole the photograph of me in my swimsuit displayed in the gymnasium. She figures she earned it cheering me on while I swam my way into our college’s Athletic Hall of Fame. And I set faster records than my high school captain who set records at another college.
Karen should dazzle my classmates and snuff conversations about regrettable memories, while I learn what they celebrate about their fifty years.
Posted by JSR at 6/17/2009 11:31 PM 
Categories: Serving Others,Retirement,Humor
Tags: Grand Rapids Peoria Central High School Illinois Ottawa Hills High School Reunion Peoria Class of 1959
Categories: Serving Others,Retirement,Humor
Tags: Grand Rapids Peoria Central High School Illinois Ottawa Hills High School Reunion Peoria Class of 1959
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