by Ethan Johnson
May 24, 2007

My 20-year high school reunion is coming up later this year. I originally thought that I would have zero interest in attending any of them, ever, for various reasons. The least of which being that I graduated from a different high school and didn't have "roots" there like my previous one.

There are a few web sites devoted to tracking down former classmates, and from time to time I check out one of them and see who has opted to make their presence known. Unfortunately, it's a real money pit, and short of signing up to say that I exist, I have steadily refused to actually pay for any of it. That changed earlier this year when I got to thinking about the "core" of the cast of characters from my childhood, which boils down to elementary school. I was framing my dislike of high school reunions in terms of who was in my high school class, instead of who I grew up with long before.

One of my former classmates claimed in his profile that he was eager to hear back from anyone who knew him. I decided to send an inter-system message, only to learn after the fact that it costs money to send the message. Either the sender has to sign up for "gold" membership, or else the receiver does. I dodn't have "gold membership" money at the time, and thought it was pretty dirty that unlike every other for-fee service on the site they waited until after the fact to demand money. I felt horrible sending a COD message to someone I hadn't spoken a word to in over 22 years.

I hoped that he wouldn't check his messages until after I had "gold" money, but too late. He jumped right on it, and as I included my home number in the message, I was surprised to receive a call right away. I apologized profusely for sending a COD message, and he said no problem, he gladly paid the membership fee to read my message. He was so blown away to hear from someone that he "hadn't thought about in years." Oh great. I think about him off and on all the time. But that's just me.

He wasn't going to attend the reunion either, until I explained my rationale of wanting to see the "core" once more. He got really excited and started making reunion plans. He too thought in terms of the high school crowd you can pretty much take or leave, and not the "core" who you spent the most formative years with. We compared notes on who we knew about and what became of them. I noted that we spoke the names of the "core" like we were speaking the Torah or something. If we didn't recite these names, they'd cease to exist.

Our elementary school had dual classrooms, one for me and the rest of my "class", and one for the rest of the X-graders. So if there were 60 of us, 30 were in the "other class" and therefore I don't have strong memories of many of those "others". Other former classmates do because everyone lived in close proximity to everyone else, but in clusters. I mostly knew everyone who lived in our apartment complex, the people who lived around 68th street knew each other, and the people who lived near High Road knew each other. And so on.

Plus, as I recall there were moments when students would pass back and forth between rooms. If someone was in the "other" classroom for 4th grade, they'd move to our room in 5th grade. Thus, even though I only have class sheets for 4th and 5th grade in my possession, certain faces appear on one but not the other. Others (like mine) are constant.

I'll have more reunion-related stories throughout the year, but for now here is the roll call of the "core" - the people who either are or would have been members of Marion Hills Elementary Class of 1981 (myself excluded - everyone knows me):

Nuray ALIN
Melissa BISHOP
Jackie BULL *
Mike BUSHEN
Sherry COLLINS (moved)
Margaret CRICHLOW *
Lisa D'ANGELO
Bryan DAVIS
Sherri DUDA
Joe EHARDT *
Ravi GARG
Tammy GILLESPIE
Heidi HAMMOND
Tim JOHNSON
Laura KLEPITCH
Jeannie KOMAREK
Lavern LANG
Guy LEWIS *
Sarina MANGIAGUERRA
Dennis MULDER
Mike ONESTO
Steve ONESTO
Lori POPE
Dawn ROSELUND
Gretchen SCHWENKER
Jeremy SIMPSON
Mark SLOAN
Jesse SMITH
David SPERA
Mike SUTPHIN
Bobby TRUJILLO
Tony TYBOR

* People I have been in 2-way contact with this year.

And people who were "in my class" without necessarily being in my classroom:

David MATZ *
Nancy SEDDON
Brad DE VRIES
Jim GUIDI **
Kim GUIDI **
Chuck KRCILEK
Bill SCHELTOFF
Emmett HAUGHIAN

* People I have been in 2-way contact with this year, as of this writing.
** Believed but not confirmed. (Update 7/17/2007: Confirmed indeed.)

Ah, memories! <EM>