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On a recent episode of the FOX series Bones, a body is discovered in a sealed time capsule opened as part of a 20 year reunion celebration. I took half the show to realize that the funny looking people in the flashbacks were the class of 1987–my class if I had graduated normally.

Boy, I feel old.

Last Saturday night (11/24) was the 20 year reunion of the class of 1987 from Bassett High School. I left BHS after the 10th grade to live with my mother in Richmond so officially I am not a part of that class. But I spent grades 1 through 5 and 7 through 10 with these classmates and in spirit they are the bunch I claim as my own.

The desire to see what everybody looks like and what happened in the last 22 years was a strong draw, but I couldn’t attend. Even the thought of returning to Bassett and being in the same town as my father was more than enough to dissuade me. Contrary to what you might think from reading about him, I don’t avoid him because he is a horrible person. Instead, I avoid him because I am afraid for him. He can’t deal with me. Every time I visit, it sets off some defect in his personalty that creates drama or causes him to drink. At his age, his body and mind couldn’t take any of that. So, essentially we are done.

The internet affords many opportunities to reconnect with people. From my high school class, I have found and at least exchanged email messages with 3 people from the class of 1987. One, Lance Frith, visited me at least once.

The reunion gave me a chance to evaluate how much I am interested in seeing more people. The disappointment in seeing the people I used to lust after 22 years later and ruining any mental fantasies that remain is a reason with merit.

Strangely, more important than squashing teenage masturbatory dreams, is the chance that these people will be unchanged emotionally. For example, two of the people who organized the reunion were John Fulcher and Chris Roach. During our time growing up together, they weren’t the nicest people. They weren’t bullies or even someone who could scar me for life mentally. But they were the typical high school males, excluding and mocking others to bolster their own egos and social placement. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt though. The fact that they were organizing the reunion has to be a good sign. And they could have grown a lot in the 11th and 12th grades, after I left. There are plenty of others who fell into this category and the thought of being trapped in a ballroom with only this group, somehow if any of my friends from high school never make it to the reunion, is scarier than I want to admit.

An interesting aside, I know of at least 3 other 1987 BHS classmates who are gay. I wonder if they would attend, and attend as themselves.

I hope everybody who attended the “semi-casual, BYOB” reunion at Bassett Country Club had a wonderful time. I hope everybody normalized into great people and they all have great lives full of love and adventure. And I hope I can find some pictures from the event