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A popular topic of conversation in my tribe these days is the 10 year high school reunion. I had mine last year and we went to my wife's just this past summer.

I actually wrote this post like 3 months ago but never came back to it and now it is lost, so this one is like an homage to the one that got away.

Basically my wife and I were confronted with the old High School stereotypes, and it makes me realize just how much better we know ourselves now.

In High School, I managed to stand out and not feel inferior to the "Cool" kids. Somehow I figured out that I really didn't want to be like them anyway. At first I was outcast and perhaps mocked, but by my Senior year, I was respected as an individual. I never really did "buy-in" the way some kids do to HS which I think kept me living in the future (instead of the present) somehow. I think I missed out on some good times that way.

Most of you reading this are probably thinking that I was the dork who was just really into his own little world and had no clue what people were thinking about him.

Probably

My wife went to a much more traditional HS than me, and dealt with much more traditional feelings of inadequacy as a result. She dipped back into those feelings at the reunion and frankly how could you not. People not talking to you when you know exactly who they are . . . Does that happen to you anymore?

I tried to cheer my wife up by convincing her that we reject people all the time. As adults when we see someone we know that we don't want to talk to, we just have the shortest conversation possible and move on. We are just as snobby and selective (as the "Cool") about who we talk to, and she just needs to convince herself that those "Cool" people from HS are in the group of people we don't want to talk to. Turn the tables on those jokers.

That is what I did back then and it is what I do now - which makes me sound cruel.

I guess I am a little cruel, but come on. Everyone on this planet knows someone that has rejected them and everyone has also rejected someone. I guess the problem comes in when you are convinced that you belong in a group that has rejected you.

I've always combatted that by evaluating what it was I REALLY wanted. When I thought about it in HS, I didn't REALLY want to be accepted by "Cool" people, I wanted to be unique, intelligent, righteous, and well, me.

I wanted to be me! I REALLY didn't/don't wish I was someone else, and I think that is the heart of the issue. People don't want to be themselves.

I guess one makes peace with that with age and you just get to know yourself better. But there isn't anything like the HS reunion to bring those old feelings out again.