Hi MOM, just back at M & D's after flying up here to WV to attend my 40th year high school reunion.

It was actually fun, and a good turn-out, especially considering that it was pulled together kind of last minute. The 40th is the reunion where everyone has actually grown-up enough to not be self-conscious or nervous. A few old friends with whom I had lost complete touch when we all moved out-of-state, or were completely preoccupied with young children and marriages, both good and bad, have moved back, and I now have their phone numbers to call when I come up to visit the parents.

The womenfolk have, generally speaking, aged more gracefully than the menfolk.

It was held at the old high school, which is now a community center, but has not been changed or remodeled. I could pick out the section where my locker was, but not the locker. The bathrooms are just as battered and graffiti covered, and the Ben Franklin Store, where we would run in at lunch to buy stockings, sodas, and the latest top 40 forty-fives is long gone, as is the movie theater.

MOM, you will be pleased to know that my old choir director, Mrs. McGucken, is still alive, and living where she always did, a few houses down from the school.

We gathered in what was once the school cafeteria, and talked about how incredulous our own children and grandchildren are when we talk about the weekly school parties that happened there every Friday night, even in summer when school was out, or the lunchtime sock-hops in the gym. None of us are sure, including the kids, at what seems most incredulous - the simplicity of no DJ, no strobe, no live band except for the 2 semi-formal and 2 formal dances each year, just a kid who volunteered to keep putting 45's on the turntable, or the fact that they happened weekly, or the fact that they could happen weekly, with no trouble or fights, and virtually no drugs or alcohol.

On a table of memorabilia was a pamphlet I had completely forgotten about. "Ann Landers. (then her portrait photograph) Necking and Petting. What is Far Enough."

I thought about inviting you to come along, MOM.


Best for all concerned that I didn't.

And anyway, it's the thought that counts.

A different time, indeed.