LOCAL ANGLES: REUNIONS AND THE USEFUL ACT OF CATCHING UP

In the periphery of my vision, I saw the small arm pumping in the back seat.

The motion startled me at first, and I prepared a rebuke, believing fisticuffs had commenced, not unheard of where car trips and siblings are involved.

Instead of the anticipated child's cry and immediate appeal for parental remedy, I heard a brief AHHWOOOO come from behind my rear right tire and a celebratory laugh from my 8-year-old.

In the mirror, I could see her waving thanks. The trucker who accommodated with the air horn waved back.

This exercise of youthful highway playfulness continued for a stretch of miles, with some in the large rigs participating and some not, no recriminations offered in either case. What I marveled at, though, was not the game, but the legs it seemed to have. I did this as a child but certainly didn't pass it along.

Like blonde jokes and Elvis sightings, which turn up coast to coast simultaneously with no discernible mode of conveyance, the request of traveling children to truck drivers for a bit of interstate attention seems universal and perpetual. The path followed isn't as interesting as the endurance displayed.

It is a bit too easy then for a man who has attended 20th-year class reunions the last two weekends to suggest such reflections are somehow profound.

I interpret this without any measure of weeping nostalgia, because few people I talked with at either reunion (my wife's and my own) declared any desire to relive bygone days ... well, maybe just a few.

The compiled biographies that are obligatory at these celebrations reflect this. In the course of synthesizing two decades of living into a crisp paragraph, classmates list the turning points in their lives with healthy matter-of-factness, cataloging births, employment, travels, political affiliations, divorces and personal misfortune in more or less equal measure.

In the end, regardless of the adversities faced by the individual, those not incarcerated usually concluded their resumes with a notation that life has been good.

This may be a function exclusively of a 20th-year reunion, since this puts classmates into their late thirties and perhaps engenders a trace of wisdom. More so than the 10th reunion, when the shenanigans of high school and experiences of college were fresher in the memory, the talk at the 20-year celebration spiraled inevitably to kids and careers. The passion with which we spoke of late nights and aggressive partying in the old days gave way readily to talk of time spent at youth league ball parks and business conventions.

Ten years along, some life dreams are still ripening. Twenty years along, it becomes clear many aspirations will not be fulfilled. Maybe bitterness in this realization doesn't manifest itself at a class reunion, where a premium is placed on putting your best foot forward (and sucking in your stomach).

Or maybe resignation is simply a more pleasant party demeanor. ("So, I never became an elected official. That damned indictment. Well, another beer?")

The disposition of the talk was more sober, if not the talkers themselves. Another sign of maturity at 20 years out: more designated drivers.

Like all students throughout all time, there were certain things we as a class couldn't anticipate. There was no way to foresee AIDS or disco. There was no way to know that 12 of the 14 years following our graduation would see the country presided over by a peanut farmer and a Hollywood actor.

We hated Brezhnev with the best of them. With this reunion, the only Red worth enmity was the grizzled Castro.

On one steely winter Sunday, I sat at a classmate's house and watched O.J. Simpson break a record for carrying a football. Heads shaking, we stood on one reunion night and got intermittent reports on another sort of running he was doing.

OK, so we did presage the fall of Richard Nixon ... hey, we sat through the hearings. (Or, as one of my wife's classmates pointed out, that was the summer they pre-empted soap operas.)

A gathering of people of common experience supposes an agenda of reminiscence, but it is really about catching up. We aren't like we were because hair is thinner and gravity has played mean tricks. Still, the people involved are able to weave what was with what is, and it makes for a nice time.

Lord help the man who comes away from a class reunion quoting album notes, but that eminent philosopher Charlie Daniels once wrote: "It's a long road and a small wheel, and it takes a lot of turns to get there."

So it is with the Class of 1974. The paths we follow are interesting in short bursts but usually routine, which is all right. It matters how we live our lives, but it also matters that we endure.

~Ken Newton is a member of the Southeast Missourian news department.