Franklin High School all class reunion[/caption]Carol Forsloff----Every year the class of every year gets together to celebrate that graduation time of years ago, most often the most significant one of the transition from childhood to adulthood, and in the summer it brings refreshment in a whole new way, with or without food.
While folks tell humorous stories about poor Dick and his hair loss or Sue with her string of husbands and over-bleached hair, for the most part high school reunions are a way of keeping the past in perspective, allowing the individual to examine his/her life and changes that take place as they compare with former classmates over the years.
High school reunions are also a time to take stock of one’s own life, to measure how one fares in relationship to peers of a certain age, and to recognize that every individual will age in a different way. Dick’s hair loss may be the topic of humor, but his intelligent conversation can be a reminder that he has retained many of the bright and interesting patterns that made him student body president or the class leader in some other enterprise. Or it can be a time to observe how Dick has settled into life as just that average next door neighbor everyone wants to have a beer with. Still it is a time to get to know Dick and have the rest of the story of how he has fared over the years.
Along with the joys of high school reunions also come some of the heartaches as the number of classmates dwindle as a factor of time and circumstances. Those who graduated decades ago find fewer and fewer of their classmates available to reminisce about those good old days in class or on the football field.
Franklin High School, in Portland, Oregon, like many of the larger high schools in a metropolitan area, has a reunion every summer for its decade of graduates, those every ten-year reunions that folks either anticipate or dread for a host of reasons. But there are those smaller, more intimate reunions where people can visit with a random assortment of graduates, as can occur with an all-class gathering. While the older graduates have fewer and fewer of their peers to reminisce with there are graduates from other years who can fill in the time and the interest as on an August afternoon in 2013. Franklin High School, like many others in the United States, has its celebrations; and there can be no more fun than meeting new friends and finding time to reflect on those years of growing up and growing older and to savor the golden years with folks with whom there is that special relationship of graduating from the same high school.
