The Birthday Bash

Class of 64



The very last thing I need to be doing today or even this week is to be taking the time to write a story.  If I did have the time to write it should be the second part to my story about the summer after graduation but we came home last night from a weekend that can best be described as spending three days in a big warm hug. Maybe if I put the weekend down on paper I can move on to doing what I should be doing this week.

This weekend my Senior Class had a birthday party since this is the year we all turned seventy.  Sounds rather silly but we started the birthday party thing when we all turned fifty.  One of our class mates had been having his annual fortieth birthday party for ten years and on what he called his tenth annual fortieth birthday party, we all decided to join in with him. Even with class reunions every five years it seemed like sixty-five was a milestone and another party ensued.  Turning seventy sounded like another great excuse for party time. If there is one thing the Muskogee High School Class of 1964 knows how to do it is how to have a great time.

Arriving at the La Quinta Inn and Suites, headquarters for everything, we were greeted by the night manager who told us no we could not plug in our electric car which we had done on previous visits. There were a few moments of silence, Marshell was looking grim and then the manager laughed and told us he was only kidding.  So the laughter began instantly.  The party planners had a conference room filled with the green and white high school colors and enough snacks to feed an army.
Naturally there were drinks to go along with that.

Classmates arrived, even some that had moved away during the school years and graduated in other locations.  They decided not to make name tags since no one is ever sure who will actually show up and many tags were left from the last reunion.  It is really fun to have people walk into the room that you have not seen for years and try to guess who they are.  Regular reunion attendees are easy but those who come for the first time in years or the first time ever make for a real challenge.  After all these years there are a times a voice you hear or the way someone moves that instantly tells you who they are. If all else fails, just go introduce yourself and find out.

A funny part of Friday evening when it was rather late and a lot of people had slipped off to bed.  Ten of us were sitting around and a wife of a classmate picked up a yearbook and started reading what everyone wrote under their Senior picture.  She did not attend school with us and inquired about some of the activities that people had listed under their Senior picture.  Lots of laughter about many of the things that people had posted in the yearbook that they did not even know what it was or that they even participated in them. Did some people just put down anything on those ten lines to fill in?  Did those with nothing under their picture just not care or were absent that day? Funny how things that seemed so important then, like having lots of activities under your picture in the yearbook, don't matter now.

Saturday morning after free breakfast in the hotel that lasted a couple of hours it was off to beautiful Honor Heights Park for a picnic. The park, all 132 acres of it, is more beautiful now than it ever has been since it was established in 1909.  It was the sight of school and company picnics, family reunions, the place to drive through night or day on it's hilly winding road.  It was famous for it's rose gardens and now azaleas and spectacular Christmas lights. It was the place to go swim or to see if a Volkswagon could really float in one of the five ponds. The park is as much a part of our growing up as school was.

Saturday night we were picked up by a trolley and whisked off to a sport's bar/restaurant in town.  More classmates we had not seen showed up to make the weekend more special.  There was a band in one room playing music that we did not relate to and recorded music for the dance floor which tended to be for country two-steppers.  Didn't take long to flood the floor with good old swing dancers and the music changed to the Twist. Too bad the trolley came to pick up the old folks when we were just getting started.

Back at the motel we were informed by the organizing committee that we had to play some games because they had door prizes to give away. No details will be given on the Plunger Game. All I will say is that most seventy year old people would not have participated but we are no normal seventy year old people.  Chair volleyball was exciting with the ball bouncing off the walls and lights.  Good thing the night manager was off duty to help oversee the game.  Actually I think he was one of the ball servers.  Like he said, his job was to make sure we had a good time.

Chair Volleyball

The very best part of the weekend was the group of classmates. At breakfast Saturday morning one of the girls said to me that she enjoyed reading my stories but that they made her sad. That was a surprise as I work very hard to make them entertaining - where did she get sad?  She said she was jealous because I had so much fun in high school and she did not.  I was really just a little surprised as she was one of those girls that I wished I was like.  She was popular and had lots of friends. I told her she was one of those people that I looked up to and wished I could be like her.  That my stories may seem funny and lots of fun but that they are just my way of masking all the insecurities and shyness that I lived with. Might be better to say, the insecurities and shyness we all had. 

Another girl said no one even knew or remembered her from high school.  Wrong - I remember her as being very cute and shy.  A boy told a story about his childhood that was pretty unbelievable that none of us ever knew.  There was a discussion about just who had the most dysfunctional family and mine did not seem nearly as bad as I thought. Another boy said how much in love he was with me and another girl but always thought he was too poor to ask either of us out. Thank heavens we have reached a stage in life where we can actually admit to our feelings to each other about the hardest years of growing up.  

One of the most important things I have learned in the fifty-two years since we graduated is that the classmates that I spent twelve years of my life with and many reunions have become family.  I did not ever meet many of my relatives for whatever reason and family dinners at holidays after growing up usually did not go well.  Moving around in my adult life I made a lot of friends but soon lost track of them without bring there to share current happenings with them.  How can they not be family when you grew up with them, spent eight hours a day for nine months of every year with them and shared all the memories of activities and events.

One of the funny moments of the weekend I shared with Robert who has always been the glue that holds the class together.  He and some other people were watching football at the hotel on Saturday afternoon.  One of the couples proudly announced that their fiftieth wedding anniversary was coming up.  I looked at Robert and asked him if he and I added up all our own marriages could we come up with fifty years. It no longer matters whether you are rich or poor, many times married, if you were a cheerleader or played football (well, maybe that still matters), fat or thin or whether your life is going well or badly.  We can get together and make everyone feel better because we are family.