Thirty years ago I sat on my high school football field, draped in a light blue graduation gown, a mortar board bobby-pinned to my 17 year old head, listening to our commencement speaker (a minister,) drone on about the statistical diagnosis of the class of 1985. He cast an uninspiring message of death, divorce, failure, and bankruptcy. He talked about the world from the perspective of numbers, the Russian roulette message of motivational speakers, he predicted the odds against us, against our success, against our happiness.

Throughout the past thirty years, I have thought of that speech, of the sadness he threw upon the future, of the cruelty and (sometimes accuracy) of his forecast.

This graduation night and the four years that preceded it were recently relived when I helped plan and attended my 30 year reunion. Our class had never, for whatever odd reason, hosted a sanctioned reunion. I had not seen many of my classmates since we marched from that football field towards our destiny.

At our event, as we danced the night away to Prince and Madonna, flipped through old yearbooks and laughed at our hairstyles, our shoulder pads, our parachute pants, Member’s Only jackets, our prom dates, I was lifted back in time to those years so long ago. We did impressions of old teachers and told hilarious stories. We paid tribute to classmates lost, showed pictures of children and grandchildren, exchanged joys and tragedies, clinging to the past version of our younger selves, staying way beyond the hour of our reserved venue’s contract.

I was so struck by the timelessness of the evening. Even if I didn’t immediately recognize people at first glance, the voice, the eyes, a quick reference to the yearbook brought back those moments in Coach Salmon’s PE class testing our sit-ups, of Mr. Layton’s English class learning Greek mythology, of Ms. Griffin’s Biology class mastering the components of the cell, of learning to drive with crazy, hot-tempered, brake-happy Mr. Allred.

I was transported back to pep rallies, homecoming parades, football games, and musicals, of all those things that helped me discover my interests, hone my strengths, become who I was chartered to become. I was taken back to the boys who kissed me on my front porch, of girls who giggled beside my locker, of friends who knew my secrets, and counselors who helped me get into college.

I have had a hard time understanding and describing my emotions of that reunion night. I stayed up until 3 am talking and laughing in my hotel room with a couple lingering classmates. My husband, the eternal good sport, went to sleep as we went on and on about our class and our night. I didn’t want the high school reel to stop looping. I wanted the night to have no end.

When I think back to high school, nothing that our fortune teller speaker talked about had yet come to fruition. I could rest in my naiveté not knowing my first marriage would end terribly or my parents would both die in the same year or I would get MRSA and end up in center of disease control.

I would not know that I would change my college major to writing, have two beautiful daughters, and accidentally land a job that has been my life’s work for twenty years. I wouldn’t know that I would actually find and marry my real soul mate or become a marathon runner or meet some of the world’s best friends in a city called Greensboro. I wouldn’t yet know what it was like to fly in an airplane or face an attacker or swing from a Costa Rican Tarzan swing.

In some ways, our commencement address got it right, we have all fallen prey to some of life’s crappy stats, the world has rained down on us and brought some bad juju and it has also brought some unexplainable joy. The black and white of statistics thrive in their regulated world called the excel spreadsheet, the rest of life is an ocean of gray.

I am so grateful for my small town upbringing, of growing up on a farm, and going to a small high school. All I wanted to do back in the day was escape and all I want to do now is find a way to re-enter that atmosphere. Life circles back, almost always, life sends you home.

In a recent NPR interview, cartoonist Garry Trudeau reflected back on his career, fame and the rebirth of “Doonesbury” in an online form. I have always been a fan of Trudeau with his quirky characters and quick wit. Trudeau poignantly explained in the interview that after 30 years of comics, his art has changed because he has changed. He said that once he drew and wrote whatever rose to his mind and now he pauses, thinking about the ramifications of his strip.

I sat in my car at the gas station listening to this interview, captivated by the fact that Trudeau was explaining exactly how I felt about going to my high school reunion.

Much like Trudeau, I was once smart, quick, and angry, eager to take on the world and take others down. The world was a nail and my hammer was always on my tool belt. Grown-up life teaches humility and patience. I have learned that the root word of sarcasm means to “rip flesh” and that kindness and grace are the best compasses. I also see so clearly now that statistics are not just numerical probabilities, but choices.

Several people commented at our reunion about how nice everyone had become. I guess thirty years has a way of settling scores and time has a way of determining that what you wore to the dance or said on the school bus was just part of the early journey. And, I guess that much like Trudeau, thirty years of water under the bridge, teaches you what is important, which to me is such a little handful of precious things. The what is so much less relevant these days than the who, the how, the why.

So here’s to our anti-motivational speaker, many of us made it thirty years and lived to tell our tales, of the good and bad, and of what we did with it. And, with such adoration that it brings tears to my eyes, here’s to the class of 1985, we were and always will be, the mighty, mighty, the mighty, mighty, the mighty, mighty Vikings.