Blog 3123 – 05.19.2024

When I’m Sixty-Four

This November if I live I will celebrate my seventy-fourth birthday. In August my wife and I will if we both are still here celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of our wedding. Thirty-one years ago this summer at my twenty-fifth high school reunion I sang karaoke for the first time at the urging of my wife. I picked today’s song figuring I had sung along with it listening to my Beatles albums as a teen to have it memorized. I felt pleased with my performance as did the hand full of classmates who had arrived early as we did to the Friday night casual affair on a riverboat in downtown Chattanooga.

My wife and I had chosen to only attend the casual observance opting to forgo the more formal Saturday evening banquet at the Fairyland Caverns Hotel atop Lookout Mountain. In so doing we missed the larger group of classmates, but figured we would feel more at home in the more casual setting.

We had a good time and enjoyed reconnecting with a few people who had once been an important part of my boyhood and teenager years. Catching up with their lives and sharing about each other’s children was interesting and fun. The gang thought me brave for getting up to sing without first having several drinks, but then I suppose I was a lot more shy and reserved when they knew me back in school.

The twenty-fifth high school reunion and later the fortieth reunion of my ninety grade class were the only two such events I ever attended. Of the two the later was the larger and most fun. It was at a park across the street where the old East Lake Junior High had stood. There was no karaoke machine so I did not get to sing, but my heart was humming as I saw so many old classmates, teachers and even our principal. Above is a picture of the group taken at the gathering in 2005.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qQry639ffhDsVJRRLyrwdL7-VMdY2Rg0/view?usp=drivesdk

When I’m Sixty-Four