10 Year Class Reunion

There I sat in my car, hyperventilating, indecisive about whether or not I was actually going to get out or whether I was just going to put the car in reverse and head back home.
This was my 10 year reunion and I was suddenly paralyzed with that familiar feeling from my teenage years...insecurity.
You know the feeling. When you walk into the lunchroom and you pray that you will recognize somebody, anybody who will let you sit down and have lunch with them. Or when you are going to the school assembly, and you hope that you won't have to sit in that single lone seat at the back of the auditorium reserved for people who didn't already have a group of friends to sit with.

But that was 10 years ago. And in the interim I have graduated from college, served a mission, gotten married, graduated from law school, passed two bar exams, and had a daughter. I should have been swaggering into that mix-n-mingle. Old habits die hard. I have developed the ability to talk with strangers and invite them over to my house in the first conversation, but facing my high school class suddenly seemed more daunting that arguing in front of judges in court competitions.

Richard calmed me down, reminded me that the Fishers would be there (thank you Nate and Lydia), and that I should be confident about who I was. So, I took a deep breath and entered the lions den. Now mind you-- I wasn't unpopular in high school, per se. I certainly wasn't in the "in crowd" by any means, but I also was not an untouchable. I was just another yahoo going to school and trying to make it through life without too much baggage. I went to all the school dances and I participated in my share of things, but I was never really comfortable with myself.

I could see the different cliques starting to form as people continued to arrive. There was the drill team table...right next to the cheerleader table. There was the smart people (aka "nerd") table, the school leadership table, etc. I sat down with Richard and viewed my surroundings, determined that I would talk to people. It felt an awful lot like my mission, as if I was getting up the courage to do some street contacting to invite people to hear about the gospel. Every once in awhile I would get up the courage to approach this person or that person, just to say "Hi" and that I recognized them. There were girls there that I had slept over at their house when I was little, or that I had been in dance classes with. There were boys who had taken me to dances or who I had hung out with back when my knowledge of dating was slim to none. After each encounter I became a little more comfortable. I realized that I could feel confident about who I was, what I had become, and where I was headed. I like who I am. And as I talked to those around me, I realized that other people liked me too. Weird how we sometimes make things worse in our imagination than they really are.

As a side note, I pointed out to Richard two of the boys I had crushes on during high school. Neither of them appeared to be married. As we walked back to our car, Richard and I passed them, and I could tell they looked a little confused as they registered my name (Richard says they were drooling but I think he was exaggerating for my benefit). Oh yeah, I knew I looked good!

One of the girls I talked with actually told me that she voted me most changed since high school.

I told her, "that is a good thing."