The Fora: A Higher Education Community

My high school graduating class was 83 people. Many of them are dead or in prison. No.

No.

I went to one of those British boarding schools you see in movies (as it happens, our dining hall was scouted for the Harry Potter movies, but Oxford won out; the school itself has been in a few movies, however). As a scholarship student, which... is not ideal in that environment. The pecking order is very much based on who your parents are and what kind of money they've got.

My parents are both doctors, and I only grew up with one of them, but even so, we were well off. But... you have no idea what that other world is like. The world of oil company owners, foreign nobility, media giants, big time politicians, the occasional mafioso, etc., all of whom send their kids abroad to be babysat 24/7 because they can't be bothered.

It's an absolutely shit environment. And I (still) loathe most of my classmates. I want nothing to do with that hellhole.

I've got one coming up this summer.  Honestly, I'd forgotten about it except I saw something on social media.  From what I understand, the last couple were kind'a busts.  The first attempt was flooded with mailings and maps and lists of hotels (like we didn't all grow up in the same little town) and RSVPs and "Family Night" announcements and a list of names of "[Mascots] we are still missing."  I was only an hour away that summer, but I dutifully skipped. 

Don't get me wrong, these were ("are still," I assume) basically good people, but we weren't really all that into each other when we were all crammed into the same crummy high school in that boring little town.  Once we graduated, the majority of us decamped for college, the military, or other places and never really returned.  A few people, it seems, have kept in touch, but not the majority of us.

I've made contact with a few folks on social media, and we have exchanged a message or two over the years.

So, why would we all tramp back to our old stomping ground----which, ironically enough, has been torn down and replaced by a very modern building----just to see people we didn't care enough to keep in touch with in the first place?

Still, I find myself at that age when one becomes nostalgic for things one didn't really treasure at the time.  And I found myself surprisingly sad when I found out that a classmate I hadn't been particularly close to and hadn't talked to in 40 years unexpectedly died last year.  And I am a long way away from my home state and have been suffering through the pangs of homesickness for a while now. 

I'm just wondering if other people went to their high school reunions at any age and  what it was like for them.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on April 29, 2024, 04:08:46 PMT1 or referee reading today. Time is short.

Managed a bit of both.

Quote from: ab_grp on April 29, 2024, 03:47:57 PMSo true! They nailed it.  Have you seen either of the remakes?

No — one version is enough for me.

We had a hot day here in the metro Baltimore/DC area:
https://wtop.com/weather/2024/04/into-the-90s-monday-is-dc-areas-first-preview-of-summer/
I stayed inside the library most of the day.

On the bird walk where we saw ospreys aplenty, we also saw several dolphins merrily splashing in the ocean, with one of them quite close to the shore.

T1 or referee reading today. Time is short.

Saturday's post seems to have disappeared, so am reposting a list of the birds I saw. Plenty of purple martins on the birdhouses built for them in the refuge--they were noisy!. One osprey carrying a fish, another sitting on a short pole along the shore munching on a rather large fish. Several more ospreys flying overhead, a turkey vulture, several foster's terns and swans, at least five swans sitting on nests. This was Saturday's count--left out the usual birds.

On Sunday I stopped at the birding hotspot to take another look at the birds. This refuge is on a fairly small strip of land between the ocean and an inlet, and the access to it on an overlook on a rather long bridge, so that the trees are at eye-level or lower. If you go down the steps you're just a path away from the refuge, which gives you a street-level view of the birds and their habitat. There were the usual snowy egrets, glossy ibises, on trees and also flying over in typical goose formation of more than 200 (probably more than 400 individuals in the same area), white ibises, a few yellow-crowned night herons, several black-crowned night herons, and what appeared to be a little blue heron. I stood at the overlook for quite some time, seeing the fights, the birds carrying nesting materials, mostly twigs, and the reason for some of the fights, birds alighting and taking off from their perches and nests, birds just milling around, and all of them just co-existing peacefully--I thought that this was DEI in actions. The highlight was seeing a glossy ibis alterate between standing and sitting on her nest, which contained two large eggs in a lovely Easter egg-green color.