High school reunion: As you were.

If there is a dress rehearsal for the great day of reckoning awaiting us all at the end of our days, it must be attendance at your high school reunion.
A small event in one's lifetime, perhaps, but one which many avoid.
Perhaps it is hard to face because it is a call back to a time when all was possible, hopes were high and proclamations of what one's life would be were bold, fearless and without limits.
Do we really want to evaluate the past 20, 30 or 40 years and consider: did we get there? Did we live life as we imagined it would be? There's that, of course.
And then there is the thought that no matter how self-possessed or successful we are now - all it will take is to be surrounded by our peers of 30 or 40 years ago for us to revert to the inept wall-walkers we were back then.
I cannot avoid my own high school reunion, which is happening in the town where I live. But I know many who are not attending. There is nothing for them to go back for, they say. Others say that high school days are best forgotten.
While I was not class valedictorian, a star basketball player nor sought-after by the boys, I didn't suffer too much. But I did know those who did. I remember the nicknames, undeserved, which stuck to those who suffered every day. I remember the students who didn't enjoy studying high school subjects which so often seemed unrelated to reality. I remember those who never had homework completed and those whose faces fell when test papers were handed back in class.
There were those who dressed a little differently from most students and those who were "not from here". There were many who could not take part in after-school activities.  If you couldn't cut it socially or academically, life was hell.
As I looked over photographs for the souvenir section you will find inside this issue of The Review, I recalled thinking the same thoughts when I was yearbook editor at VCI in the 1970s. There were the so-called "cream of the crop" students who seemed to be involved in every school activity and who played on every sports team. And then: there was everyone else.
The super-achievers' happy faces were in lots of pictures in their assorted basketball, soccer, volleyball and track uniforms.
Everyone else was depicted in a sparing head-and-shoulders shot -- you know the pictures - students captured for one startling moment by a photography company visiting for the day.
I remember high school as a time to figure out how society works. There were those who took things seriously, figured out the rules and single-mindedly went after what they wanted. Some resisted just to resist. Some embraced the school community; some turned their backs on it.
To some students, high school was an institution which was holding them back. Other students saw open doors, discovered team spirit and used it as a jumping-off point to a fulfilled life.
In the end, we all grew up. And in life after high school, there was a world of choices. And there still are choices to be made, even if we still feel weighed down by appearances and responsibilities.
Entirely apart from academics, teenage years were and are a time of intense learning.
For me, the greatest discovery came after high school. I found I was not so unusual after all; at university and in life, I have met a lot of people who shared my interests and my views. (For those who did not know me then, I was far too serious about everything.)
And the handful of teachers who saw this individualness inside me encouraged me to keep going. That has always been a reminder for me that a little respect can go a long way.
This high school reunion is a second one for me. In 1990, as we celebrated VCI's 100th anniversary, I was so involved in the organization of the event itself, that I was able to keep busy and avoid the reality of the thing. I was 20 years younger then and didn't feel as if there was a gaping chasm between my high school days and the present day.
In some ways, of course, we will have changed. But most of us will be the same shy or obnoxious or silly or serious people we were then.
We will likely see in each other the same things we saw decades ago, all of us slightly altered as some of our qualities have been tempered by life's experiences while other qualities have flourished, having served us well and taken us to good places.
I trust we will take away good memories from this weekend - even as we relive past good times in our old high school, which is soon to be torn down.
Aside from our family, after all, the friends of our youth are the only ones who really remember us as we were.