Perhaps it’s the fact that eight months ago, I moved back to the town I grew up in. Or, maybe I have high school on my mind because I anticipate a milestone class reunion this summer.  Then again, I did get a call from a fellow Sweet Adeline the other day who insists we sang soprano together in a capella  choir.  She was a junior my senior year. Mostly, I suppose, it is because there is something familiar about the name of my newest adult piano student.  Something niggles in the back of my mind. What am I missing?  What incident from my past should I connect with that name?”

Whatever originated the impulse; as I readied a couple of boxes of books for storage yesterday, I stopped and took a trip down memory lane in my high school annual.  Once again, I am mortified by my poor showing.  Had I no sense of fashion? No self-confidence?  Even in high school, I was musically adept; student directing the choir, acting as rehearsal pianist for the tenors and basses, beginning my apprenticeship as piano teacher. Musically talented, yes; but, in every other area – a nerd, unpopular, un-sought-after.

I graduated with a fairly large class – over 400.  The class before me was also large, and the class that followed.  Given that it is a small world after all, and that I have spent many intermittent years in my old home town, it should not seem strange that I occasionally run into former classmates in the social and business world. I have attended church with a handful, and participated on worship teams with others. In my early thirties, I even dated the class president from a preceding year.  Thankfully, he did not remember me; had never known me, in high school.

I always cringe when I know a renewed acquaintance will go back to the yearbooks and see me as I was:  girl nerd poster child.  I wonder, do others also shrink from this possibility?  They, too, may have changed in the intervening years.  So, last night, I lingered with the yearbook, looked in their faces.  There are a few whom I would not want to meet on a dark street.  Woe to me if I did not remember them from high school and take necessary caution.  Some character traits do not grow better with time. There are others who, like me, were not completely formed by the time we graduated high school.  It did not yet appear what we would be.

Others, even in high school, bid fair to succeed – the girl who was always smiling and friendly to me, whom I always thought a snob, simply because she was a cheerleader?  She became a senator.  I found my Sweet Adeline colleague in the choir picture. Though I sing high tenor with the Sweet Adelines, I was an alto in high school.  Happily, I think she is mistaking me for a more popular girl who shares the first name by which I am now known. And my new piano student?  Standing right next to me in the a capella choir picture!  Yes, it is a small world after all.