My 20-Year High School Reunion

A week ago, I got a notification that I am a year away from my 20-year high school reunion. I noticed that many of the people wrote how they were getting old. And to be honest, there were some that did look like they got old. Mostly, the reunion got me thinking about the kid I was twenty years ago versus the man that I am today. The following is what I posted to the Facebook group.

I quietly made my way through high school. I didn't make the most of my time at Roosevelt. I wasn't overly social and didn't date until after I graduated. My sophomore year, I began playing sports, but I rarely played. The few clubs that I joined, I wasn't overly active in. I never went to a party and the few friends that I've kept in contact with, I rarely speak with once I moved away from Iowa. I wasn't anti-social, I've always like people. The problem was that I wasn't an overly active participant in my own life. I didn't really do much, good or bad. While I grew up in the Roosevelt neighborhood, I moved before I started attending the school, so I didn't live near any of my classmates. 

It wasn't until college that I blossomed, socially. At the University of Iowa, I tried to talk to everybody. I organized a birthday bar crawl with 75 people wearing a tee shirt with my face on it. 

Four years ago, I moved to Texas because I didn't want to spend my life wondering 'what if'? I've been happily married for nearly 12 years and have a 10-year old son and a 9-year old daughter. I quit my job to stay home and write books and encourage my kids to join every club and to play any sport. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn't do anything when I was younger. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Youth is the most beautiful thing in this world—and what a pity that it has to be wasted on children!”

While I don't think that this quote applies universally, it certainly did for me. I never got senior pictures taken because I didn't see the point. (Plus my parents would have made me pay for them.) So, 19 years later I've decided to rectify that by reenacting other people's senior pictures and posting them on here. Because, why not? As there are roughly 300 senior photos listed in the 1998 yearbook, and a year before the reunion, I have a lot to choose from with a lot of time to take them.

I hope that, whether you enjoyed your time in high school more or less than me, you are enjoying your current life even more and doing the things that you've always aspired to do.

Adam J. Williams

Also, if you want me to reenact your picture, let me know.

I will post my reenactment pictures here, so stay tuned.

Do you have a reunion coming up? Have you been to one already? Please share memorable events from yours.