REUNION

I'm sorry I didn't ask R. for a date. If I could live my senior year over, I'd ask her. I'd had a crush on her since kindergarten. She might have said yes. Insecurity stopped me from making the first move. Now I'll never know what might have been.

I have a handful of teenage regrets like this one, only a few. Summed up, I had a satisfying teen experience. High school was a fun time. It would be hard to ask for more, really. But I don't put those years on a pedestal, and they were not the best years of my life. In that respect, I'm in a slim minority when compared with my classmates.

Lets go back two years, to 2003. My 10 year high school reunion was painful. As I maneuvered the room between tables of ex-classmates, I got the sense that some voodoo witchdoctor had hexed everyone, removing the living part of them - and leaving shells. My diagnosis was an easy one - the smell of death was everywhere. Their dreams were beyond resurrection, and their funk overshadowed the festivity. And something else constantly resonated under the feeble party music "I was happy, once" was the evening's theme.

The star quarterback was bald, and the head cheerleader was fat. Their lives had turned out differently than they'd hoped, and they had changed for the worse. They had stopped making plans for the future and had lost hope in a happier tomorrow. My '93 graduation address to the class came back to mind several times during the evening, the words echoing back hollow and meaningless. Who had I been talking to that night? Were these really the same people? It wasn't just the gowns and mortar boards that were missing. Where were the bright faces, shining eyes, and hopeful grins? Maybe college, careers, marriage, and children were not what they had expected, but was it all so bad? Bad enough to make them bitter and hopeless? It was the saddest funeral I've ever attended: RIP youthful optimism. Not to mention good looks.

I (of course) found myself in a different place that summer night. I was optimistic about my very promising future. I looked better than I had in high school. My dreams weren't dead, just pruned. Life was balancing itself out so that I'd have a stable foundation for the next fifty years. Was it my faith in God that made me different? I thought so at the time. The witch doctor could just shove it. I was never going to be a zombie.

That was just pride on my part. Now I think I was immature. I hadn't avoided the same place the rest of my class was in. I just hadn't reached it yet - the place they had been living in for a year or two - or more. But here I am in that place now. The ghosts of my classmates greeted me upon arrival. They are glad to help me mourn my losses. Drawn to my dead dreams, they circle around me, whispering, "I used to be happy." Should I mimic their refrain? Stop dreaming? Lose faith? What am I doing?