So, about my 45th High School Reunion...
Look, I don't want to make anyone unhappy, and I am sure that the best way to avoid that is simply to say nothing about my experience, but experiences like this come along infrequently, and I feel there is some lesson to be learned in my reflections for those of you who might be receptive, or receptive enough to click the link to get here. So, here goes:

First of all, I STRONGLY suggest that you attend your 10th, and 20th reunions at a minimum, and don't just show up at the 45th to greet people who you have not laid eyes on in 45 years. It is just too shocking.

I believe I was, am, the youngest person in my graduating class. My parents, in what can only be kindly called misguided wisdom, skipped me two half years before I entered high school. What were they thinking? The difference between being 15 and being 16 in high school is and was huge. In fact, and I am not making this up, I met the husband of a  classmate who, in discussing this at the party, said his GRANDfather, who was 93, STILL complained bitterly about the fact his parents had done the same thing to him. I have done the math, and I was 16 when I graduated, turned 17 a month later while hitchhiking through Europe with a backpack. The question remains, what WERE they thinking?

So, that was 45 years ago, (yes, if you just did the math, I am 61, unbelievable, huh?) and I have laid eyes on maybe as many as 15 of my fellow graduates since then. I still held in my head the images of most of those people from back then. I knew, intellectually, that they'd look different, but emotionally, I just wasn't prepared for for the fact that, as an engineering friend of mine put it the other day, "the delta was so large." In fairness, we were a group of people young before the concept of sun screen or anti-oxidants existed, almost everyone smoked cigarettes, fitness and exercise was for the athletically inclined and recreational drug use...well this was Berkeley High in the early 1960's.

This whole experience was not made any easier by the fact that The New Yorker Magazine issue of April 30th  has a well-written article by Atul Gawande on page 50, titled "The Way We Age Now." It was waiting for me to read the next day. Like most articles in that magazine, you end up biting off way more than you are expecting, and this article goes into detail, not only about how we are falling apart as we get older, but investigates the alarming dirth of trained doctors, geriatricians, who are available to deal with aging as an unfixable fact of life. Read that article and you will appreciate the subtle and not so subtle signs of that slippery slope, and if you just attended your 45th reunion, the article is punctuated by images of some of your classmates, and maybe even you.

Being the youngest in the class, the sense I had of myself back then could be summed up in one word: unnoticed. Despite the fact that the ladies seemed to be attracted to something about me, I don't think the age difference thing ever went away in high school, or even in college. I may still be dealing with it on some level.

It seems the truism that people just don't change is, indeed, true. People I met at the reunion who thought they were hot stuff back in '62 still think they are hot stuff, even if they are really just lukewarm stuff. People who were jerks back then seem to have the same stuff: ("Paul, you're not going to want to hear this, (So why are you telling me?).....but we did a wine tasting with $40 wines and $4.00 wines from Trader Joes and 9 out of 10 of my friends preferred the Trader Joes) (My response: "Now that China is getting into the wine making business, just think how cheaply you will be able to buy your wine in the future." To continue, People we elected as leaders still show leadership and have palatable integrity. People who thought it was funny to drink still think it is hilarious, and sweet considerate people back then are still considerate and gracious. No, wait, wait, I take that back. People DO change:. 

I really had only two main male friends in school, Bruce and Peter. We spent most of our time doing things that make me stammer even now. We should be in jail or dead or both. Most of these things involved big fast 1960's automobiles, alcohol, and night hours. Bruce had been to visit me in the winery recently, he hasn't changed drastically in appearance, has an established career, still a playful glint in his eyes, but you can see that life has changed his salacious ways. Peter was also at the reunion, someone told me. "Where," I asked, " point me toward him!" She complied and I walked over to where several men were standing. If I squinted my eyes real hard, I could discern which one was Peter, despite the fact I had neither heard from nor seen him in 45 years. It was a brief interchange because many people were grasping his ear,  but I learned that my high school hell-raising buddy was now a superior court judge. So people do change.

As I left the party out into the cool Berkeley night air, already removing my tie, I reflected on something I heard and noticed many years ago. I am paraphrasing here----- I may be bright enough to skip part of the third grade, but I'm not smart enough to memorize everything I have heard verbatim!

If you define yourself by material or  physicality, you will live a life of fear, fear that the material will go away, be stolen or dissolve and the physical is onlt briefly yours. To be whole, you must define yourself from within, by your character, by your essence, for that can never be taken from you. So, Grasshopper, if you are still busy defining yourself  by the uplift of your chest, the amount and color of hair you have on your head, the size of your tiny waist, the smoothness of your skin, and/or the sleekness of your butt, it's time to look inward, find some other less fragile definition and answer the musical question "will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"

Paul Kreider
Not just your winemaker, but a kind and generous man