17 + 40

I remember high school in two groups-- the wild ones and the responsible ones. Freaks and jocks.

There isn't much wildness left after 40 years, but there is satisfaction and wisdom and a kind of underlying joy at lives, if not absent disappointment or brimming with success, at least appreciated and understood. Which I suppose is what we mean by "wisdom."

I suspect that some of the wilder ones just don't do things like high school reunions, but they're missing something precious. They are missing learning, finally, that the things that bind us are more important than the things that separate us. They don't get to see, in stutters spaced 5 years apart, the girl shining out through the woman, or the gentleness in the boy's eyes that you mistook for indifference or weakness, before you learned to be wise.