Reunited and it feels so good...

It's funny how getting together with high school friends for a reunion can make those years seem so much better than they actually were. Looking back makes you realize that things were actually pretty good.

Teenage angst keeps you from appreciating a lot of things. Fortunately, by the time I graduated from San Luis Obispo High School, I had a pretty good appreciation of my classmates.

I really looked forward to driving "home" this weekend -- after 26 years away, San Luis is still home. My parents passed away in 2001 and 2002 and I just hadn't had a lot of reason to go back. It just wasn't practical. I need to be less practical.

Many of my classmates attended the Friday night football game (wow, you mean alumni really do return for homecoming?) and then went to the gathering at the Veterans Memorial Building afterward. We didn't get up there in timeto do that (and maybe I have a diversion against attending events in buildings that have giant cannons in front of them), but there was still plenty to do on Saturday.

It began in the morning with a brunch at the high school cafeteria. This is not where we had our cafeteria. The building they eat in now used to house business and home economics classes. I have to admit: I had never been in the building before.

In some ways, the brunch was the best part of the weekend. For one thing, it was much more low key than the reunion event itself. There wasn't a really loud band playing and it was easier to talk to people. Several of our old teachers were there (and yes, I do mean old) and it was great to see them. The scary thing was that a lot of them didn't look all that much older than we did.

So many of them had taught at SLO High for three decades of more. That is rare now and it was rare then too. San Luis Obispo is a rare place.

After the brunch we went on a tour of the campus. The place we used to hate to go to never looked so good. And so big! With most of us having had kids who have gone through or are going through high school, we know how concrete-bound most campuses are. Conan Nolan put it best, as Conan would: "This place is pastoral."

So much has changed, so many new buildings have been built. But so much was the same too. I'll tell you one thing: If any of us had remembered our locker combination, we could've broken in. Those lockers hadn't changed in probably 40 years!

After an afternoon break (and at our age, most of us needed a nap!), we met at the Elks Club for the big event.

Now then: I'm not one to complain, but Elks Club? Veterans Memorial Building? School cafeteria? Only place we didn't get to was the Grange Hall! I went with my wife to her San Gabriel High reunion last year and it was at the Pasadena Hilton. Aren't there any nice hotels in San Luis Obispo? No, seriously, meeting at the places we did was great. Those places say a lot about who we are and how we were brought up. And I always love partying at a place that has antlers!

Remember how we congregated in cliques in high school? Some of us kind of did that again Saturday night, myself included. But not exclusively. It was funny how much Facebook figured in this reunion. In fact, there were some people -- particularly Jayne McClung Bauer, who left SLO before graduation and who I didn't really know while she was there -- who I now know more from Facebook than from high school! She came over to introduce herself at the reunion, but I already knew who she was.

Facebook really helped me "prepare" for this reunion, to tell you the truth. I was geared up better for how people look now, for what women's married names were now, things like that. That prevented me from seeing some people and having my jaw hit the floor (never a tasteful reflex). It wasn't foolproof, however. At one point, I'm pretty sure I called John Belsher "Roger Schoepf."

I was impressed and somewhat surprised by how many people still live in San Luis Obispo or nearby. But only somewhat surprised. Most people, when I tell them where I grew up, ask me: "Why did you ever leave?"

Spouses who didn't go to the same high school deserve a special reward for going through reunions, and my wife Karen was wonderful: taking pictures and doing a pretty good job of keeping track of names. The best thing she did Saturday night, however, was tell me I looked like one of the youngest people there! Not sure I believe that, but what a great thing to hear.

Some of us looked young, some of us didn't. Some of us have smiled a lot over the years, some of us haven't. Some of us have had a lot of things go our way since we left high school, some of us have had a hard life. All of that shows. But all of us are precious and it was a wonderful time to see each other, no matter what we looked like.

We saw, we hugged, we ate, we danced, we laughed. We clung to each other like we wish we could've back then. I tried to tell several people during the day how much they meant to me back then, how much they still mean to me; how impressed I was with them in high school, how much I'm impressed with them now. Events like these don't mean much if you don't communicate appreciation.

On Sunday morning, we went to church, to the First Baptist Church on Johnson Avenue where I spent so much time as a kid and as a college student and as a young adult. There were only about five people who recognized me from those days, but it was great to connect with them again.

It's amazing how much the personality of the church has changed. In a college town, a lot of people come in and out of a church, students and families both. The building was the same and I was sitting in the pew thinking not much else was.

Then I saw it: the offering envelope in the pew pocket in front of me. On the front was a small line drawing of the front of the church. I had asked a friend in our college group who was an architecture major at Cal Poly if she would draw that picture of the church. The church liked it so much, it wound up using the drawing for a time on its stationery, its bulletin covers, just about everything. And here it still was, 30 years later, on the offering envelope in my hand.

It was the only time all weekend I cried.