Hubby and I are
preparing to attend our high school reunion seven hundred kilometers away.
Our high school
experience was unlike most. We attended Sunshine Bible Academy, a private
Christian boarding school in the middle of South Dakota. How a fourteen-year-old
Manitoba girl landed so far from home is a long story. Suffice it to say I was
there of my own free will and my parents’ good graces.
Back in the 1970’s,
attending any Christian school usually meant living in a dorm. When you not
only attend classes with people but live together, you bond more than you do in
a typical high school experience. You become family. During my time, enrollment
was higher than space allowed, so we frequently had three girls to a room. It felt
like a college experience, except we were much younger. We learned a lot about
sharing space and getting along.
Lights out was at
ten, but my roommates and I had our own rule. When our digital clock said
11:11, we had to stop talking and go to sleep. Whichever of us noticed first (usually
me, the non-night owl), would call out, “It’s ONE-ONE-ONE-ONE!” and that was
our cue to shut up. To this day, if I happen to look at the clock when it says
11:11, it makes me grin. Most nights, I’m fast asleep by then.
Sharing a common
faith also made our high school years unique. We had chapel every day and Bible
classes along with our regular curriculum. Classes opened in prayer. I was
never much for sports, but I recall our girls’ basketball team being known in
the district for the team that sang in the showers after a game—in beautiful
harmonies, even when they’d lost. We tended to walk away from music
competitions with most of the awards.
I remember spending
spring breaks on traveling choir tours—two kids to a suitcase. One year a
spring blizzard cut our tour short, leaving us stranded in the same town with
strangers who had only intended to billet us one night and ended up keeping us
for three. I could only see things from my own disappointed view. I wish I
could go back and be a more gracious, helpful guest.
So many memories at this place! |
Graduation day felt
heart-wrenching because following the ceremony, we’d all return to our home
towns spread across the continent. We had little reason to think we’d see each
other much, if at all. The internet didn’t exist. Some of us stayed in touch
for a year or two, then it dwindled to Christmas letters and cards until an
address change caused a letter to bounce back unopened and you thought they
were lost for good.
Then, along came
Facebook.
In the last decade, I
have reconnected with more high school friends than I did throughout the
previous three. Because I’ve seen their recent pictures, I might even recognize
them! I have a better handle on their lives, their families, and their work
than I did in the eighties and nineties when most of us were raising our
families. Now we are grandparents!
With forty years of
life experience behind us, I know we’ll have far more to share than one weekend
can possibly provide. I wonder if we’ll be able to stay awake later than
one-one-one-one?