Two Words

I am getting ready to go to my twentieth high school reunion this weekend. I am looking forward to going and actually getting to know my former classmates as adults, and forgetting who they were as hormonal pre-adults guided more by popularity instead of embracing their uniqueness.

I went to a small school and graduated with approximately 125 other students that could not wait to leave and become full adults or college students. I always tell my friends from bigger high schools that even if we were not friends, we still knew everyone and something about them. Over the past twenty years it seems that I have forgotten a great deal of high school and the people that were my classmates.

With the advent of adults being on facebook, I have been lucky enough to get to know a group of fabulous women and men that have blossomed into people that I look forward to talking to, going places with and are nothing like I remember them.

I recently found my yearbook and was looking at the senior superlatives and realized that after four years people are summed up into one or two words. I remember those people by those two words because I never really took the time to know them in high school and did not continue many friendships for 19 years.

Looking at the yearbook, I see pictures of classes and groups, and wonder where I would have sat back then and what assumptions may have been made because I sat next to one group of people instead of another group. The thought of would I have been welcome sitting at one lunch table over another started to rear its ugly head. I sometimes look at the pictures and realize that the four years were simply required of my life and became a stepping stone to something better. I would like to credit serving my time in high school as one of those character building moments that taught me that life stages are like stepping stones to whom you are meant to be. I really believe in high school that I became a forward motion thinker instead of one who looks back and thinks about what has been.

So when I go into my reunion, I need to keep an open mind that the “Class Clown” is now the Director of Community Living for a large non-profit. Our “Class Cutie” is now a single mother who is just finishing training for her dream career as an EMT and realizing that she is in control of her own destiny. The “Class Flirt” is a woman who is willing to follow her dreams and open a retail business selling products she has a passion for. The “Homecoming Queen and one half of the Class Couple” did not marry her high school star athlete boyfriend, but married a man who is smart, loving, an incredible father and encourages her as a mother and a writer. I also look and start to ask did our “Most Talented” go on to star on Broadway or ever record his own songs? Have the “Most Likely to Succeed” really successful and are they happy with what they have achieved? I have learned that success in no longer measured in money, but in how you get to live your life.

I try to think about what two words may have described me at 17 and I no longer have a clear picture. I know I did not really understand fashion, I did not go to many parties with my own classmates, I had a boyfriend in my class but most people do not remember that we dated. I am pretty sure that the words people would use then, could never describe the person that I have become and who I am happy being.

Recently on facebook people asked their friends to describe them. I posted that status and was very happy with the words that describe the person I have become. They ranged from genuine, witty, unique, inspirational, compassionate, sassy, plucky, interesting (in the good way) caring, thoughtful, vivacious, honest, feisty, jaunty and authentic. These are the superlatives that I am proud to have earned by learning who I am and enjoying the experience.

I have promised myself to see each person for who they are and not who they may have been. I can only hope that they see me for who I am. The 37 year old me, has decided that if we gave out superlatives I would like to be Class “Sassy Pants”.