Fun Happenings!

I suppose those of you who follow my meanderings on this blog are gonna be sick to death by mid-September of hearing things about my upcoming 50th Class Reunion but it's something I am really excited about and getting even more so every day. So the best I can say here about that is to offer my apologies about this topic that's gonna come up pretty frequently over the next three months!

But today was really a bonus day for me!

I decided I'm going to make the phone rounds again with my classmates and try to reach out to as many of 'em as I can get to answer their phones and talk to them about things concerning our reunion.

Today (that would be Friday even though I'm now writing this after midnight, Saturday a.m. time) I decided it was time to start making some calls. I ended up calling three numbers that netted me two conversations with females from our class and the third call, I got to speak with the wife of a classmate who gets along so well with all the rest of our class, it's almost as if she was one of us, ya know! Good people, all of 'em that I reached today.

But the second call I made was a bonus for sure!

When that classmate answered the phone and she knew who was calling -thanks to her caller ID -the first thing she said to me was "I've been thinking about you all day today and wanting to call you but couldn't find your number!"

Seems that her granddaughter had, just this morning, set up a Facebook account for her grandmother -one of my close old friends from school -but her grandmother couldn't remember how to spell my married name so she couldn't "Find" me on Facebook! How opportune is it that I called her and then, since she now had a Facebook account set up and working, I "friended" her as we talked -and boy, did we ever talk too! Had at least a 90-minute conversation with her!

And so, that way I added another friend to my count on Facebook!

In the course of our conversation she mentioned to me how upset she was to learn -via her mother-in-law -that a guy from our class and his wife had divorced and I was pretty shocked to hear this news, especially since I knew for a fact that this wasn't true though. I told her that I was pretty sure that couple was still together and she says no, her mother-in-law said that they've been divorced for quite a few years now. Well, I explained to the friend on the phone that I was really sure that they were still married because they have attended every class reunion we've ever had and furthermore, I'd seen that guy's wife (who wasn't in our class) a year ago at a big amusement park that Mandy, the kids and I were at a picnic there, sponsored by the agency that provides therapy services to the grandchildren and one of my fellow classmates who is also involved in putting this reunion together had just told me about a week or two ago, that she had heard from this guy and his wife and that they are planning to attend our reunion. Finally got my friend on the phone to figure then that her mother-in-law must have been referring to this guy's older brother who had divorced probably 15-20 years ago -maybe more -but that this other couple are still together. So it made her happy then to realize she'd been on the receiving end of some incorrect information.

Then, early this a.m. I had posted on Facebook that I was looking for the words to our school's Alma mater and also, that I wanted to get my hands on the music for that number too! I didn't want the sheet music for the song but rather, was hoping someone might have a recording our the school band playing the alma mater.

Early this evening, Maya and I went over to Clearfield so I could pick up a prescription waiting for me to come get it at Walmart after which we stopped at Long John Silvers to grab some supper and when we got back home, I saw there was something stuffed inside my front door -in between the screeen/storm door and the big house door.

When I picked that paper up, lo and behold, there inside the paper was this CD and on it, was our high school band playing the Alma Mater and the paper -well, that was a copy of the words -all four verses -of the Alma Mater too!

That really made my day! Just such a great feeling -to sit here and listen to the band play that, ya know and it took me back in time to the many, many times over the years in school and yes, a few times even since then, that I have been some place and heard our school band play it and could join my voice with many others then and be able to sing the words to it too!

Yes, after 50 years since my own graduation, I'm proud to say that I still remember almost all the words -those four verses -to that song!

But then too, considering the teacher we all had for Algebra I back in the good old days had a policy too in that every single student of his, in the kid's Freshman year, HAD to write the Alma Mater every day -so many times, whatever number the math teacher tossed out as required on any given day, throughout our entire freshman year! Sometimes it was "Copy the Alma Mater 25 times, other times the number might be anywhere between 25 and 100 times you would have to copy the alma mater! It was his requirement and to make sure we were actually learning the words, during Monday morning assemblies, when -of course -it was required that we sing the Alma Mater (along with the National Anthem too) that teacher -good old Mr. Lucas -would scan the faces of his Algebra I students at Assembly and boy, you better hope and pray that when his eyes landed on each kid, that you were caught trying to sing that and not just pretending or else, you got another number of copies required to be turned in -along with all the regular Algebra assignments he gave out too!

And yet, you wonder, don't you, how I can look back on things like that from 50-54 years back and still say that "Those really were the best days of my life!"

Because, really, they were that!