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I needed more time.

After 50 years I knew these people I passed notes to and TP'ed houses with and were my lab partners had accompished a lot. I was blissfully tired after two evenings of reminiscing, mourning and grinning widely with them, but I wanted more.

I know some people hated high school and, thus, reunions. And despite all the angst, raging hormones and crying in my pillow over being left out of some dumb basement party, I loved it. I had friends from every clique - from the collegiates who wore their hair like John Kennedy, to the greasers who looked like Vinnie Barbarino, to the brainiacs (now geeks) who were my friends in Math Club. I could have been labeled a geek, I guess. I mean, I worked in the front office for the principal during my study hall! (It looked good on my college ap.)

Our nametags this weekend had our class photo and our full names on them. In most cases, I didn't have to look at them. However, different hair color and glasses threw me and I would do the "squee" thing when I realized who they were. Hugs, kisses, sometimes tears followed and then the inevitable first question this year, "Are you retired yet?" Not "Where did you go to school?" or "Where are you living?" or "Do you have children?"

I'm a librarian, so I am always curious. I would stare at them when they answered "Yes" to retirement until they told me from what. That's what I really wanted to know. "What did you do?'' the last - whew - 50 years. Some were surprised at my question, wondering why I would care. And their telling would end up being a great story about an interesting profession or a geography lesson about where they had lived.

There were many who served in Vietnam, and I thanked them yet again for their service, some as 30- or 40-year careers in the military and some who are still suffering from that thankless war. There were small groups of men and women who still hang around together, never leaving the old neighborhoods, some still in their childhood homes. There were widows and widowers, some whose spouses were our classmates, who used these nights to help ease their pain.

Then there were the quirky stories: a retired fireman from the town where my sister lives just had to know which house was hers, because he knew them all; the rancher from Orlando whose 94-year-old mother refuses to move from Cleveland to there because she hates his new wife; the lawyer from Pensacola whose firm helped out my husband in a case; a good guy's sister who has a condo very near ours on Fort Myers Beach and actually knew all about the failed golf course on that street.

There were a few of the class geniuses, one who has lived in the south of France for the last 40 years, a retired radiologist from that school in Ann Arbor who now only reads international xrays, and a retired biology professor from Kent State who was somehow involved with the discovery of Lucy. There was the nun who needn't worry about foul language around her this time. (At our 40th reunion, when we danced up a storm, she just laughed when we shouted those "bad" words during "Mony Mony.") Only a handful danced this time. We just wanted to talk. The DJ was superfluous.

This is why I needed more time. Around 11 p.m. on the second night, I was exhausted from talking and laughing since I'd arrived at 6 p.m. in my beloved Flats, where I spent many a night drinking 3.2 beer and dancing under the bridges of downtown Cleveland before I moved away. I gave away my extra drink tickets because I knew I had a drive in the dark through the maze of this underground to my sister's house in the burbs. I knew I didn't get to everybody and I sat up straight in bed that night worrying that I hadn't recognized someone who had meant a lot to me. What if I hurt someone's feelings? What if I never get the opportunity again?

Our Student Council prez and the unofficial/official MC of this reunion suggested we come back the year we all turn 70 - which is (horrors) in only two years. I hope so. I need more time.

- Yvonne Ransel

Yvonne Ransel is a writer of essays - some humorous, some poignant - who is inspired by life's crazy, everyday events. She was a librarian, then a bar owner, now a librarian again. She survived the '60s and the millenium and the years in between as mother, wife and now grandmother of six.