Attending your high school grad reunion?

[Nostradama]

I have never gone to any reunions but I think those that brave it would probably see it as a memorial time in life. Well we may still hold those hangups from the good old school days but I think one could really surprise themselves.

If you are able to, go for it! Re-live those youthful days!

Oh yeah, this will be a memorial time of life. Between thirty to forty percent of the class are dead. In a way, going would be kind of like going to a funeral, because I doubt that there will be enough people left to hold another one. And the people I might really want to see aren't going anyway.

Actually, I never felt like I had any hang-ups, I figured other people had them. In Grade 11 or 12, Social Studies had major Canadian history content, including Louis Riel and the "Riel Rebellion." I'll never forget that class, and I don't imagine the teacher ever forgot it either. This is absolutely word for word from the textbook: "After the execution of Louis Riel, the native people of Canada became a ragged remnant clinging to the hem of civilization." I won't ever forget those words. In all of my school years, I'd never yelled at school, but that was my moment. I went ballistic. The teacher yelled at me for about five minutes, and then sent me to the office where the principal yelled some more. I'm surprised they didn't strap me. The principal called my father at his office and told him what I'd done. Then my father yelled at him. And that night we didn't have supper at home. My father took my mother and me out to the town's "fancy" restaurant, where people usually went for wedding anniversaries and birthdays. He was so proud he was bursting his buttons.

Years later, after my father had died, I was visiting my mother in that town and I took her out to dinner in the same restaurant. The teacher who'd yelled at me was in there with his wife, and he had the decency to come over and apologize. It was the year they had put Louis Riel on a postage stamp.

[Nostradama]

I'm sorry I misunderstood.

But maybe I should get you in touch with an ex-student on FB who's going through the same diarrhea, vomiting, crankiness because of it all, etc., thing with her little boy right now. I think she's in day four or five now, has seen her doctor with him, and was taking him up to the emergency ward today. (No Sunday walk-in clinics that she could find.) She could probably use some advice! Seems to be going around, especially with the "about three years old" group right now, although a guy who's been delivering to my place regularly for over a year had to use my bathroom yesterday. Poor guy. I know him well, he was pulling a shift and a half because another guy had to go home sick, and I offered bathroom use.

[Nostradama]

Just another random thought! I think some may feel intiminated taking the spouse with them. After all you are there to talk about the good old days and I don't think the other half would feel uncomfortable or not understand the focus one would place on hashing the old times.

I guess my ex was smart about my twentieth. We brought along one of his single buddies, who was a big hit with the divorced/single female group. At least the ex was flying with a wingman. But the ex kind of missed his calling--he should have been a politician--one of those people who could walk into a room full of total strangers and in half an hour know everyone and remember their names. But thinking about what you've said, it couldn't have been easy for him. It was back in the days when natives were still "Indians" and all that load of bushwah stereotyping that went with it, and he was younger than I was. I don't know what people expected, but what they got was a six-foot knock-out with tan skin, black hair and blazing blue eyes, wearing a three-piece suit and a tie. There goes another stereotype.

Since he was a few years younger than I was, but not noticeably, and it was so long ago, do you think that makes me one of the first of the cougars?

[Nostradama]

I graduated in 1994 and wouldn't go to any of my high school reunions. Wasn't a social guy then or now. In a way maybe it would be good to go and show up " experts " who said I'd never make it in life. . . .

Plus one of my old high school teachers and I played golf in the golf tournament that the pub I go to puts on. I had no idea he was a regular at the pub I go to, and it was nice to reconnect. I see him occasionally, and it felt odd that I could call him by his first name, after not being able to do so in the day. So while high school wasn't the best for me, it wasn't all bad. Oh and an interesting footnote. My high school grad night was Tuesday June 14 1994. Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Canucks at Rangers.

When I was in elementary school, the high school got the bright idea that they were going to give every student an IQ test and an aptitude test. One of their earlier wastes of taxpayers' money. I only remember it because of my parents talking about it when it happened, and many years later talking and laughing about the follow-up. One set of parents were called in and told the best thing they could do was to send their son to the vocational school about a hundred miles away. No, they weren't having it. He graduated, he went to UBC, he went to medical school, became a doctor, did more training, and was on the medical team that did the first heart transplant at Vancouver General Hospital. Another set of parents got the same story. They didn't go for it, either. Their son ended up being a full professor at Lavalle University, wrote a lot of books that are so complicated there's no way I'd ever understand one of them. Absolutely brilliant. A third set of parents, same story: their son ended up as a neurosurgeon. I don't know what they were doing in that high school before I got that far, but it sure as shootin' wasn't brain surgery, but they had students capable of doing it and didn't even know it.

Years later, when I was a teacher myself, I loved telling my students those stories.

From a teacher's point of view, it's really hard to finally convince your former students to call you by your first name. I guess it's a built-in reaction, but years ago when I was already a teacher myself and ran into teachers I'd had when I went to my hometown to visit my parents, I had a tough time calling them by their first names, too.

I graduated so long ago that the NHL wasn't even thinking of expansion, hockey teams rode the trains, and Foster Hewitt Senior was still alive, but if the Canucks had been around and were in the Stanley Cup play-offs, I would have just cut my grad to watch the game. No waffling. Hockey first, grad way down the list.

[All Ages Music Concerts]

I am still wondering why we hesitate to go back into the past? It holds good memories and some sad ones? Still believe the hangup issues never leave us from the past until we re-enter it!

[All Ages Music Concerts]

[QUOTE=Nostradama;57564]When I was in elementary school, the high school got the bright idea that they were going to give every student an IQ test and an aptitude test.

I remember taking the IQ test in grade 7/8? and the principal called me into the office to tell me I had an exceptionally high IQ and he wondered why my grades were not at the high level! Well *de* I came from a family of 10 kids and life was kayos! No time in space to concentrate on homework.

[Persephone]

Hey Nostra!

Feel free to send them my way. I seem to be an expert in childhood illnesses... lol

[Nostradama]

Hey Nostra!

Feel free to send them my way. I seem to be an expert in childhood illnesses... lol

Hey, Persephone!

I may just do that. Now the little guy is really going nuts, started during the night. I told her to take him back to the ER and she's probably there right now. During last night, he scratched her arms, bit her, and hit her so hard in the mouth that it's split her lip. That's not normal (says she, who has no experience with little kids and never even held a baby until she was twenty-three. ) I remember terrible nightmares myself as a little kid, when every time I got a childhood disease I had nightmares--and I got everything that there weren't shots for, which was darned near everything--and my mother told me that I'd been "delirious". Didn't tell me that until I was old enough to understand. I think that's what's happening with this little guy.

This is totally not the way this little guy normally behaves. I mean, he's "all boy", a tough little guy, but well behaved. If things got really strange and I got invited to take him to tea with the Queen of England, I'd do it, because I know he'd behave himself.

Her husband's out of town on business right now, and her parents don't live here, so that makes it tougher. I may end up hauling my ass, a quilt and a pillow to her place, so that I can spell her off and she can get some sleep. And her friends are young Moms, too, and she doesn't want to have their kids exposed to whatever it is that her little guy has.

If nothing comes out of today's visit to the ER, I'm going to DefCon 5, which means bring out the ballistic missiles and the nukes. I just "happen" to have the personal cell and land line numbers for my own doc, "Dr. Cute". At my age I can do "helpless little old lady" really well (not sure he'd buy it, 'tho, and I'll PM you about that, not putting my business out here) to get her some help. She can't take much more of this, and the poor little guy can't either, I don't think.