Nineteen Eighty-Seven

Or more specifically, Class of 1987.

Yep, that is a picture of me. And, yep, it has been 20 years since I was in high school.

The concept is a bit odd to wrap my brain around. In some ways I don't feel like a damn-near 40-year-old. I'm hip, funny and virile. Completely different from all the adults I knew when I was a teenager.

But in other ways, I do feel like I'm knocking on 40's door. It takes a while for the back and ankles to stop hurting when I get out of bed. There's the extra pounds and less hair. I can't dunk a basketball anymore.

When I think back over the past twenty years, I guess I've done a lot: Two colleges (and one of the most unspectacular basketball careers ever). I have learned, and then have forgotten sign language. I've been to 3 Olympics for work, backpacked the Grand Canyon and gone under the knife for various surgeries 4 times (2 unsuccessfully - thus the sore ankles mentioned earlier).

I got a phone call a couple weeks ago from a classmate who had hunted me down. Renae, sounding just as sweet as she did 20 years ago, filled me in on the details of our class reunion. I had somehow misunderstood that a planning meeting in May was our actual reunion. I was on a plane to L.A. at the time so I figured that I'd have to miss this decade's event and catch up in another 5 or ten years.

So, good news for me, I didn't miss our reunion. Bad news (more just bad timing) for me, the reunion is being held on November 2nd which is the same day our first baby is due. So I miss out anyway.

Too bad, because I've sort of lost touch with everyone I went to high school with.

My folks moved from Phoenix a couple years after I graduated and went away to college. Since it was no longer home for me, I hardly ever went back. I moved on with my life and pursued a career.

Then I went to my 10 year reunion. I got everyone's contact info - phone numbers, addresses, emails, whatever. I went home and on set up a nice little file with everyone's info on my work computer. Unbeknownst to me, I worked at a company that came close to the Nazis in how it treated its employees. They would arbitrarily erase everyone's personal files without notice in the name of 'company security'.

So, one day I go in and all my files are gone. Our IT guy ignored me for about a week until I cornered him and asked what the deal was. He mumbled something about unable to do anything to help me out and said that the server was the property of the company and they had the right to do anything at anytime without notice. Technically, he was right but it would have been nice to know ahead of time so I could save those.

Anyway, I lost contact with everyone all over again. Only a couple of months after getting it all in the first place. On top of all that, I found out later that my company was filtering all emails that weren't work related. So if any of my buddies were sending me emails, they were getting read and blocked by my supervisors.

So all of you people in the Class of '87 at St. Mary's High School in Phoenix Arizona, give me a holler! I won't lose your info this time...and I'm registered at Babies R Us ;)