I attended my 50th grad reunion last week and I was looking forward to seeing and reacquainting with friends that I had spent many years with. I picked up my tag with my grad photo and my name on it and walked into the hall. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed the room was full of senior citizens.
As we started to greet each other, we realized the committee should have used a much larger print on the name tags. People were having to pull their glasses from their purses or jacket pockets and then still had invade each other’s personal space to read the printing and make out the image.
But once the connection was made there were hugs and handshakes and it wasn’t long before we were all back in the high school gym in June of 1967.
My Mom had saved the original program from that night which we reproduced for each place setting. The ladies had found some vintage ’60s formal gowns and had them hung along the walls just to add some flavour.
The conversations were interesting. Back in the day, we would stand in the parking lot on Friday afternoon and talk about going into New West to dance at that new, hip, joint. Now we were discussing our new hip joints. Guys used to drag race along the Langley By-Pass, now they race to the hospital to get a by-pass. One fellow had metal hips, metal knees, cataracts and hearing aids but he was proud to still have his driver’s licence.
There were people who used to have duck tails and wavy hair who were now shiny on top. There was a fellow who always had a brush cut who now had long white hair and a beard. They all won door prizes.
There were bragging competitions about children, grandchildren and, for a couple of folks, even great-great grandchildren. It seems that all our offspring are very beautiful, handsome and smart.
Everyone took a minute to stand by the Memorial Board and chat about those that have passed and it was good to hear some laughs as people recalled an incident or two with one of them.
We had an open mic and the only grad to take advantage went up to proudly say that he was wearing the very suit tonight that he had graduated in. His parents took him to Hamilton Harvey and paid about $40 for it. We were all envious.
One friend who has always lived here in Langley seemed to recall different facts about the stories I write each week. I told him true stories are good but true stories with colour added are better.
When one of the grads was leaving he thanked the committee and said, “This was great, this our roots and our foundation. It’s good to remember where we came from.”
They say you can’t go back, but we did last week. At least that’s what McGregor says
