I’m writing from my 20-year class reunion.

	Eli Cranor

Everybody still looks basically the same. Except me. I’m now bald and bearded. I can’t quit marveling at my friends’ full heads of hair.

We’re at the high school football stadium. The Russellville Cyclones are taking on the Fort Smith Southside Mavericks. Huddled with my former teammates, we dissect schemes and fundamentals. We decide things have changed since we wore the red and black.

Doesn’t every class feel the same?

Yes, of course they do, but upon closer inspection, the scene isn’t really all that different.

The student section still occupies the same slice of bleachers they did twenty years ago. They don masks and homemade shirts and cheer with a familiar fervor, a passion born of youth and full-contact sports.

Under the bleachers, preteens roam. Twelve-year-old boys lurk in the shadows of their taller female classmates. There are more boys, younger boys, playing touch football in the grass beside the concession stand, the exact same place I once played when I was too young for real tackle ball. On my way to the bathroom, I clap for a pass that never comes.

I refrain from telling those little hellions that I was once the quarterback, a god of the gridiron. Besides, there’s a new signal caller in town now.

My classmates make comparisons.

“Think you could still play?”

I know I could, but at what cost?

Now there’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since that rib I fractured in college started giving me fits. My feet and ankles have turned on me too.

If I could go back and do it all over again, would I?

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It doesn’t matter because I can’t.

Nobody can.

There is no going back. There is only this one fleeting moment, this singular weekend where the class of 2006 has come together again.

Or at least some of us have.

There are, of course, some folks who aren't here. Maybe they had other obligations. Or maybe they just didn't want to relive high school, but that’s not what this is.

Not at all.

After the game, Mal and I have people over at our house. Open invite. No cliques. No titles. No jocks. No cheerleaders. No bandies. No gamers or goths. Just come as you are, not as you were, and they do.

Our house is soon filled with a group of people who would’ve never attended the same party in high school. There are forty, maybe fifty of us, scattered across the kitchen, the living room, the back deck.

Stories are told. Some true, some fabricated. Laughter catches the breeze coming in off the lake and blows us back to a time when we didn’t realize how much we all meant to each other.

Those early days, those first friends, the people we grow up with — they matter more than we know. Whether we’re willing to admit it or not, for better or worse, high school is a foundational time.

And judging by the crew gathered here in my house, I know my foundation was/is rock solid.

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