school daze

 My high school has an alumni newsletter

    I don't think it has a regular schedule, but it seems to come out twice a year.

    Last fall the group said it may not be able to publish any more because it was getting expensive and the money wasn't there.

    Well, the donations poured in!

    I even knew a couple of the names who donated....Sandy and Jill, who both read this little look into my boring life.  

    I am always fascinated by the stories in the newsletter.  Most of them are just a couple of hundred words, but they just always draw my attention.

    For instance, in this issue a grad was out in SanFrancisco visiting her daughter.  They went to eat at a local restaurant and seated beside them was a college friend of the daughter.  This was not a planned meeting, just a random lunch. 

    As the grandparents started visiting, one of them said he grew up in Chicago, so did the visiting lady.  Then he said he went to Lake View High School, and so the did the visiting lady!  Even stranger, they graduated together!

    I guess after 40 or 50 years you may not recognize a classmate.  Heck, I don't even recognize me in pictures from that time period.

    Such a small world.

    Once when Julia, Jackie and I were visiting in Germany, we went to a privately owned castle.  As we were waiting in line, we struck of a conversation with the woman behind us.

    She asked where we lived, we said Illinois.

She said she attended school in Illinois, a small private college southwest of Springfield. Then she said it was Blackburn.  Julia about croaked because she went to Blackburn!

    Here's a school with an enrollment of less than 600 and 2 alums meet in Germany.

    Granted, they did not attend at the same time, but still.

    Small world

   Jackie and I were in Juneau in front of the governor's house when a lady asked me if I knew what flowers were growing in the garden.  I told her I did not know Alaskan flowers, but I knew Illinois flowers.  She said she knew Wisconsin flowers.  I asked her where in Wisconsin, and she said Green Lake.  I told her we had friends from Rochelle who had a summer home there.  The lady looked at us and said, is it Alice Reed?  She's our good friend.  Alice was secretary at Tilton School at the time.  And by the time we got home, Alice had already heard about our encounter.

    One year Jackie and I were going over to visit Julia and a man came up to me in O'Hare and called me by name.

    We chatted for a few minutes, then he said his son, a former student of mine, was flying to Zurich.  Turns out he was a couple of rows ahead of us on the plane.  I said hello to him, but he had a look that was either "I don't know you" or "I'm afraid we are all going to die."

    Disney was right, it is a small world after all.

Peace and Love