I know some people who enjoy going to their high school reunions. Extraverts mostly. They go to their reunions for many reasons, but I cannot get myself worked up to go. I lived through those years and there was some fun stuff along with some bad stuff. I'm a different person now. I've moved on. The things that we held in common back then no longer bind us.
One of the guys I hung out with has a false memory of an event a few years after high school. He remembers making signs for the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy and that I was part of that group of people. Actually, I was far away, going to school in Houston at that time.
Time and distance can play tricks with memory. Events and people become confused after a while and we compensate by inventing fictions to fill in the blanks and help us make sense of it all. The older we become, the more fragile the memory, the more likely we will insert a fictional assist.
The truth is. I am horrified by some of my teenage behavior. I've changed, hopefully for the better, but I have no desire to open up the book of the past and trigger a nasty memory for one of my former classmates or for me. Spending a weekend apologizing for being stupid and reckless behavior is not my idea of fun. I wish all my former classmates well, but I'm not going there.
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