Some people

say that you can never go back.

This weekend,

my girlfriend and I will test that adage, as we will be attending our

high school reunion.

It is a strange

reunion in that it does not fall on one of the traditional reunion years.

We graduated in June of 1993 and our class decided at our post graduation

party to meet up in the most mystical of years, the year 2000.

I don't know

if we were expecting flying cars and dinner pills, but it seemed right

at the time. It kind of makes sense when you consider that the majority

of the people in my class were born in 1975 and now we are all a quarter

of a century old.

It is also

strange for me because I did not actually graduate with my class. My family

moved to Peachtree City from Beverly, Mass. in November 1992 and I moved

with them. I graduated from McIntosh High School, but my roots lie up

north. Several of the people I hope to see this weekend were people I

have known since I was 6 years old.

Reunions are

amazing things when you start to put it all in perspective. I knew some

of my fellow students in first grade, which was Ronald Reagan's first

year as president. We were in the fifth grade when the Challenger exploded

(our generation's Kennedy assassination) and sophomores in high school

when the Gulf War began. We were in school before computers had CD Roms

and graduated from high school before Al Gore's Internet really took off.

I know what

has happened to some of the people I went to school with, but I want to

see what has happened to the rest of my generation.

A friend of

mine says reunions are lame, because the people that you kept in touch

with are the only people you'd hang out with there anyway. He also says

that you get forced into the same cliques and if you were such good friends

with these people, you wouldn't have lost touch with them in the first

place.

I can see his

point, but what about seeing the people that were friends but not close

friends and networking with people with similar interests. What about

seeing the failures of the people you disliked and talking behind their

backs afterwards. That's part of it too, isn't it?

Is it wrong

to want to see the bullies of my school still delivering pizzas? I think

not. It will be nice to see all the kids who thought they were so big

and tough, now as adults scared and without a clue. I want to know who

is married with children and who is already divorced. I want to see who

became what. I want to see who is gay.

Going to this

reunion, I'm not as big a success as I'd like to be. I thought I'd be

working for "Saturday Night Live" by now and bringing a Hollywood

starlet to the reunion with me in a stretch limousine with a chimpanzee

dressed in a tuxedo. Sadly, I'll be bringing only one of these things.

The chimp's name is Mr. Nanners.

Overall, though,

the reunion isn't about vengeance or being mean spirited. It is more about

remembering that time of innocence, where we had home room periods to

complete homework assignments and study halls to goof off in. It is about

seeing former crushes, people I just lost touch with and people I passed

in the halls for years.

Things always

look better than they really were in hindsight and I can't wait to look

back.

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