A high school reunion is a fun-filled skip down memory lane at trying to remember the way we were as teenagers. The recent All-School High School Reunion at Dodge City was a celebration of many mostly seventysomethings at being alive 50 years after our graduations and enjoying our brief time together. It was fun!

Yes, Nancy Boyd, a retired teacher, attended the recent reunion. We hugged, visited and sat together along with her husband and six other classmates from the Class of 1965 with 19 graduates. That was half of the known surviving seniors from our class.

The reunion attracted more than 100 grads, some with their spouses, coming from Alaska, California, Florida, Texas, Missouri, Colorado, Washington, Oklahoma and throughout Kansas. They represented classes from 1947 to 1972.

Overall, the attendees were excited and perhaps partied harder than they did in 1999 until the reunion ended at 9 – just in time for my normal bedtime in order to start the next day by 5:30 and welcome the sun.

Class reunions are an interesting experience with a few lessons learned.

Lesson one: While aging can change appearances, it was refreshing to see and recognize the smiles, glances and expressions of classmates who knew each other long ago still look the same with some wrinkling, graying or retreating of hair, and bodily changes.

Lesson two: In moments of uncertainty, name tags with high school senior photos are the fourth-greatest invention of all time. Fire, the wheel and spell check (especially for a writer) are the top three, if you were wondering.

Lesson three: It was great to be surrounded by people who instinctively knew and understood my high school years because we all were educated in the same place with many of the same teachers even if at different times. It made casual conversation easier.

Lesson four: No one will ask you about professional, social or economic triumphs. There was no pretense at our school reunion, certainly not as this stage in our lives with most attendees entering or nearing their seventh decade of life or older. We reminisced about high school, of course, but we also talked about our present lives and found common bonds. As I listened about their lives, most of them have ended up successful, happy and fulfilled. Their stories had a balance of enough economic success with a wide diversity of life choices, experiences and additions of grand and great-grand generations in family trees.

No one was on their cell phone other than to take pictures. It was eye-to-eye, memory-to-memory, thanksgiving-to-thanksgiving, story-on-story.

Finally, lesson five: Time is limited. We were so aware of how quickly the years were passing and so were our classmates. It’s a sad reality about aging, health challenges and a reminder of the fragility of life.

Over the course of time, we have witnessed and experienced many changes, good and bad, sad and glad, in our lives. Ford High School has long faded into the past after being closed after the 1972 graduation. The building was partially demolished during the past decade or so. The fenced school grounds are now occupied by about two dozen goats with new kids at old Ford High.

High school reunions are a celebration of people, family, places, one’s history and a reawakened awareness and appreciation of dormant blessings, just for (hopefully) being at peace with our journey thus far.

We’ve all had, to one extent or another, a successful life, both professionally and personally. We are, I believe, all happy, content, satisfied in our life stories with many chapters ahead. Just hope to see many more grads and classmates in 2025. Reunion organizers were encouraged to change the timing of the all-school reunion to biannually instead of every five years. Hope that occurs since it will also be the 60th anniversary for the Class of 1965! If so, plan to party hard like it was 1999 once again, but probably until 9, once again.

Some old habits are hard to change in later life.