My last column was about memories. This one is, too. Last July, I attended my 50th high school reunion in Bexley, Ohio, and it was a treasure trove of memories.
I have long relished telling the story of the day I had my wisdom teeth removed, the summer after my junior year in college. I went to the oral surgeon, got my impacted choppers yanked, went home with a goatee full of dried blood and laid down to sleep it off.
Once I snuggled in, my mother got a call from a high school classmate, Steve, who was five houses away, sitting with another classmate, Howard, who had just gotten his wisdom teeth pulled. Howard called because he had to leave, and needed someone to come sit with Howard. While none of us knew it beforehand, Howard and I had sat in the same chair, under the knife of the same oral surgeon, back to back. When I heard that Howard was sitting up while I was still supine, I hopped out of bed and hotfooted it to Howard’s house, determined not to let him recover faster than me.
I was looking forward to laughing about this story with Howard at the reunion, but he had no recollection of it. A story I have told for years was a cypher to him.
But after I talked with Howard, the shoe was on the other foot. Another classmate told me a charming story about how I had asked her to dance at a seventh grade party. I loved that she associated me with a happy memory, but for the life of me, I can’t remember a bit of her story.
Happily, most of the stories I told and heard at my reunion were remembered equally well by me and my classmates.
From seventh grade though tenth grade, I had a pair of Ohio State football season tickets. (On the day when Ohio State employees received their season tickets, my father used to hide in the bushes and buy them for $16 plus a bottle of bourbon.) In seventh grade, I gave one of my tickets to my best friend, but he moved away. After that, I picked a different friend for each game, and at the reunion, one of them mentioned how much he had enjoyed going to a game with me.
I shared a laugh with another classmate, Bob, who was my partner in managing the eighth grade basketball team. During games, I kept the scorebook while Bob ran the scoreboard. At one game, the referee was looking away from the basket and asked Bob and me whether a shot by one of our players had gone in. It had, but Bob told the ref that it hadn’t. That memory has stayed with both of us ever since, but it not until the reunion that I learned about the tongue-lashing our coach gave Bob after that game.
Another memory that two of us recalled was made during our sophomore year when my grandmother took me to England for spring break. One evening, sitting in a theater to watch The Mousetrap, I turned around in my seat and saw a girl from my high school homeroom. Neither of us knew the other was going to London, but there we were. And we got to smile about it at the reunion.
Marching down the street in the reunion weekend Fourth of July Parade with yet another classmate, we shared a chuckle over the time he was left behind in the den mother’s bathroom while the rest of our den of Cub Scouts drove off on a field trip. Phil got left behind because we had invited another neighborhood kid to join us, which made the nose count come out right even with Phil in the bathroom. After we laughed about that, Phil and I discovered that we have another set of memories in common — both of us have climbed all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000 foot peaks.
I conclude with the big kahuna of memory stories, a 50-year-old story involving me that I knew nothing about. One of my classmates told me that he had had a thing for the girl I dated our junior year. That year, my grandmother took me to England again for spring break. At the reunion, my classmate told me he had hoped that my absence had signaled a break-up with my girlfriend. Sadly for him, we had not broken up, and he never got his shot.
Hearing that story was a bolt out of the blue, and something great came out of it. My classmate has kept in touch with my former girlfriend’s sister, who works in admissions at Ohio State, and thanks to my classmate, I contacted her and told her about our daughter’s excellent experience at Ohio State. Small world, eh?
In short, I’m already counting the days until my 55th reunion.