Hey, Kevin A, I'm happy for you. What an unexpected experience from an event you weren't planning to attend. Sounds, great.
I have my 50th, coming up next year and like you have not attended one since, probably, my tenth. You have given me reason to consider attending it, instead of blowing it off, like before.
Bill H
Do reconsider. You never know how seemingly small events in your life end up playing themselves out in the lives of others. Here's just one example. In 6th grade I had a one-summer friendship with a kid named Gerald. Gerald drove up from St. Louis this weekend just to see me when he heard I was coming home. The summer of our friendship, Gerald was over an overweight kind of goofy kid with two left feet and a great sense of humor. I was an undersized weakling who followed but never led. Toward the end of summer I invited Gerald to spend the day in my neighborhood. We ended up in a pickup basketball game dominated by my older cousin, who was the neighborhood bully and counted me as one of his followers. After hours of being bullied and humiliated by my cousin, Gerald decided he couldn't take it anymore and started out for home. I felt helpless in the situation. Not completely satisfied I guess with his "victory," my cousin started to stalk him and mock him as he made his way up the street. That did it. I totally lost it and did something completely out of character. I ran and jumped on my cousin's a** and beat the holy crap out of him for about 10 minutes until finally a couple of neighbor men came out and managed to pull me off. End of bullying, end of story, life goes on. That was 1966. And now it's 2018 and here's Gerald standing in front of me. Gerald the one-summer pal. And he's telling me how much that day meant to him. The first friend he ever had who stood up for him when other kids were making fun of him. And how he's never forgotten that day. Huh?!! I thought it was just a day that demonstrated when a weak little sh*t like me loses his temper, he can do a lot of damage to someone else's face. lol But it had a life-long impact on Gerald. The whole weekend was like that, meeting one person after another and seeing how little things we did left an impact on the lives of others. Really pretty amazing. Bill, go to your reunion!