High School Reunion

Yesterday I attended my 10 year high school reunion and I was pleasantly surprised and had a good time. From a cynical perspective, not much as changed in that the same groups of friends seemed to coalesce to catch-up, but this seemed to derive from continued connection and shared interests. It was great to see everyone and hear about people's endeavors. Most people were young professionals or in graduate school and those that were married were married in the last couple years, overall similar stories to Liz and me. Although I saw many people who I have had casual contact with over the years and heard about through the grape vine, the most inspiring aspect of the reunion, was seeing two disabled students from our class Andre and Tapua, both have had stable jobs for several years. Tapua suffers from mild but permanent mental disabilities and physical disabilities. She was always affable and gregarious and during high school our class was very inclusive of her. Over the past 10 years, I had occasionally wondered how she was doing out in the world. I was moved to learn that Tapua seems to have been particularly successful, working for the state for the last 9 years (several of my friends not facing the same challenges and having more resources have not had the same success). Seeing how proud she was of this accomplishment really made me feel good. She has permanent challenges and clearly will never have an easy life, but seeing her being a happy contributing member of society made me proud of what can be (in an Obama hope sort of way). Go humanity!