Subject: Be in the loop
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:10:47 -0500
From: Todd Marshall
To: ALL
Hi Class,
No doubt about it ... the reunion was a huge success and that didn't happen
by accident. Miss no opportunity to thank those who made it happen.
But also miss no opportunity to make the next one an even greater success.
Three out of four of our fellow students did not attend.
Since planning on this reunion began I have been casually talking to my
friends about reunions. Obviously they fall into two large classes... those
who go, and those who don't go.
Those who go already know how much fun they can be and how they can provide
that occasional grounding as life throws its endless series of curves.
For some who don't go, it is because they just don't hear about them. For
this there is no excuse in this day and age. We must all redouble our
efforts to locate our friends and help them "be in the loop". My colleges
and fraternity never seem to have trouble finding me, even after moves to
six different cities in seven years. So I know it can be done. The internet
and email is the medium of choice. Folks ... it is now more essential to
our lives than the telephone which was also once considered an
extravagance. We must encourage our friends to adopt this technology as the
necessity it has become. Encourage them to join this community.
A few of those who don't go would go if they didn't have something more
important to attend to. I don't know about you guys, but I have spent my
entire life getting ready to live. I've attended to things that are really
not part of life while missing out on things which were ... all in the name
of getting ready to live. I realize knowing this will not put an end to it. But for
those who can plan and schedule their lives, we need to help them. We need
to keep them in the loop and we need to keep the loop interesting. And when
the loop calls for a gathering, they will then know and can plan
accordingly.
With others who don't go, their absence seems to be deliberate. For many,
high school was an experience they never want to relive. I suggest they
should relive it for as we all have seen in the last month or so ... it
really wasn't exactly as we perceived. We are now more mature and for some
of us the hormones have finally settled down. We can see clearly now.
I would be astonished if of the 200 or so who didn't attend, they have not
one friend in the 80 or so who did. You and I are that friend. When I put
up the lost and found page
(http://phs62.Withglee.com/Intranet/LostAndFound.htm) someone asked me if I
was joking. I was not. I found Everett Lyons, one of my closest friends in
high school using the links that are on that page. But I did a very bad
thing. I expected someone else to contact him about the reunion and about
this new electronic community we have in operation here. I don't know if
anyone contacted him or not. But there is no excuse for my not contacting
him. I have attempted to do so now and his voice mail and I had a nice
chat.
There is a new game on the web (http://www.geocaching.com/) relating to GPS
(Global Positioning Systems). These neat little devices allow you to
locate yourself, or anything else, anywhere on the globe within a yard or
so. The game is about hiding a cache and giving people clues to finding it.
When they find the cache, they take something out and put something of
their own in. And they report their findings. It could be a model for a
reunion game. We have hidden some of our friends. We need to go find them. And
when we do, we need to take something from them (like a lead to contacting
one of the other 200), and we need to leave something with them (a link
into this PHS62 community), and we need to report them into the group.
If we do just that, we will create a whole new problem for the next reunion
... finding a hall large enough.
Thanks for your friendships and another little tug back to ground.
/Todd