~Bennett Cerf
Last evening, Mr. Cottage and I attended his 50th high school class reunion. Yes, 50 years! Many years ago someone told me that their mother was attending her 50th high school reunion. I couldn't even fathom the thought. Something like that seemed so far off and very ancient to my ears. So how can it be that here we are attending a 50th class reunion when it seems like just yesterday that Mr. Cottage and I first met in college!
They had a special board with photos of all their deceased classmates with a bouquet of white flowers to honor them. What was so unbelievable was how many had died over the years. My friend and I counted over 50 and that's from a graduating class of over 600.
Before I go any further, I have to tell you of a class reunion we attended many years ago. It was for Mr. Cottage again and in the same location as the one we attended last night. We had walked into the building and found a room full of older people. This was the wrong room, so we went upstairs to the other gathering and discovered that his reunion was in the first room we had been to. Yup, the room with all the older people! So funny at the time. So I knew that his 50th reunion would have older people. After all, we're talking 68 and 69 years old.
This is the cover from Mr. Cottage's class yearbook...
I didn't grow up in the Grand Rapids area and I didn't know his friends, other than just a couple of them and their wives. Fortunately, we sat with them and talked and talked all evening. It really was great from our standpoint to just sit and observe everyone seeing one another after so many years had past. And unlike the reunions of years past, many people were leaving fairly early. No more 1 or 2 am going home times...
All of his classmates who attended had name tags with their high school photo on them. All of us others had just plain name tags. So it was quite amazing to sit and observe the gray hair, or no hair, on the men and glance at their photo on their tag and see this handsome dark haired guy. One woman in particular really stood out to me because she looked more like 48 or 50 years old. Not a wrinkle to be found! Hmm, are you thinking what I was thinking? I told Mr. Cottage on the way home that I knew some of the women had either botox injections or even more drastic work done on them. Then there were the ones who actually looked more like 78 years old.
Only two more years to go and I'll be attending mine. I haven't been to one since my 25th reunion and even then some had changed so much in appearance, I hardly recognized them. There were over 500 in my graduating class so it will be interesting to see how many will be attending this special reunion. I've already told Mr. Cottage we'll be attending mine. I've been away from that area for almost 50 years!
No comments:
Post a Comment