To all my fans out there(both of them): a lot has been going on for the last month and a half and I'm going to try to catch everyone up somewhat. I'll take it one event at a time.


20th Class Reunion

The 3rd week(end) in May the wife and I piled into out 1999 honda accord and went to my 20th anniversery in Magnolia, Arkansas(about an hour due east of Texarkana if that helps anyone). The reunion consisted of 3 events: a Friday Night mixer, a Saturday morning high school walk through for the purpose of seeing all the changes that have been made to the high school in the last 20 years, and a Saturday night dinner and dance at the local country club.


Friday Night Mixer

This was definitely the most surreal of the three. I knew in my brain that everybody would look older but my last memoryof these people was how they looked on graduation day; May 14th, 1987 when everybody was 18. As people started to come through the door it was like a time machine in my head went off, trying to reconcile how people looked when they were 18 with how they looked 20 years later. This happened over and over for each person that I recognized which was kind of trippy. There were quite a few people that I didn't remember, even after looking at their name tag. And many of these people seemed to remember me as their good friend. I was the tallest in school so maybe they remember me that way. I did see a couple of friends there that I used to hang out with quite a bit but not nearly as many as I had hoped. One of these friends only lives 15 miles away from where we live, which was great. We're planning on getting together for lunch soon as he's an attorney and comes to the county courthouse in Denton quite a bit.


Saturday Morning HS walking tour

Our guide was the current hs principle. I think when we graduated, he was the asst principal at the jr high. Most of my memories of him consist of him being a pe teacher when I was in fifth and sixth grade. Anyhow, we met in the library where he started off by telling us how technologicly advanced the school had gotten, how wired the placed had gotten and how lessons were now transmitted from the library to the classrooms. Most of the library books are now on cd(if I heard him right).

Next we walked over to the band hall. We first entered a large bandroom about the same size as the ensemble rehearsal rooms that I rehearsed in at BYU. Then mr principal man informed us that the was the small one. We all walked over to the other half of the building and saw the other bandroom. It was HUGE!!!! WOW!! Not just big but cutting edge, too. Attached to the ceiling was a white satellite opject that we were informed was a sound system(or part of anyone). Actualy it was part sound and part projection(projector) but it was extremely sleek and modern. I'm guessing that that part of it alone was between $50,000 and $100,000. Apparently Magnolia has money to spend. A lot of it.

Then we went over to the huge, new gymnasium. It is very large for a hs gym, has arena style seating, and is convertible for several differnt activities - like graduation. A very nice facility.


Saturday night at the country club

I had never been to the country club before. It was fairly nice but not overly so. The shindig was scheduled to start at 6:30 and that's when people started to stream in. I think dinner itself wasn't served until 7:30 or so. The dancing started after dinner, 8:30 or so. I got to talk with several people whom I hadn't seen yet. It was fun & interesting. Fun to see old acquaintenances and interesting to see what people had done with their lives. Some people did great things, started families, got good educations and good jobs and some pretty much stayed like how they were at graduation. There were a lot of both.
At 9 or so a couple of friends and our wives got bored with the whole deal and went to McDonalds of all places and sat and talked about our childhoods for a while. It was nice reminiscing, talking about movies, talking about how our lives were going. They are some good people. The kind of people who make me think that maybe the world has a chance.