10 year high school reunion speech (8/26/2006)

Post date: Sep 22, 2011 2:17:40 PM

Good evening everyone. I just want to start by saying how good it is to see so many familiar faces again. It’s amazing how easy it is to lose touch with people when you refuse to join myspace. Seriously though, if anyone sees Mr. Segadelli tell him he’s off my top 8 for good now. I mean that, I’m sick of it.

I think tonight is one of those events many people have been either dreading or looking forward to for a long time now. It’s kind of a milestone for a lot of people, a checkpoint of sorts to see where they are in their lives compared to where they thought they’d be. And there’s a bit of inherent anticipation that comes with an occasion like tonight’s. People have been wondering things like, where has everyone lived? What have they been doing with their lives? What do they look like? Who are they with? And most importantly, do they still listen to Ace of Base? A night like tonight is pregnant with opportunity to get answers to many of these questions. Tonight you have the chance to find out which one of us made millions and owns a private plane after inventing the self-igniting duraflame log. Tonight you can discover which one of your classmates traveled to Nepal to live with Sherpas for 7 years. And, tonight you can finally solve the mystery of which one of us tore their ACL two months ago while playing basketball because that little handicapped girl fouled me when I was totally about to dunk on her.

Yes tonight there will be a lot of answers as to what happened in the last ten years, and I thought I’d take just a minute to briefly share with you a few things we’ve accomplished as a class.

As a class we’ve traveled to every continent except Antarctica, where those little penguins marched.

Speaking of penguins, some people came from as far away as Hawaii to be with us tonight.

Some members of our class have already been married ten years, while others actually married fellow classmates, and still others are keeping a hopeful eye on the class of 2006…

Some people in our class have as many as four kids while others still don’t have any that they know of.

Many went on to pursue more education, working on postgraduate degrees like MD’s, PhD’s, MBA’s and OPP’s.

Yes tonight you are in the presence great diversity. Seated amongst us are lawyers, bartenders, doctors, triathletes, waiters, pilots, and teachers just to name a few. So as a class we should all be very proud, except the lawyers of course.

As you can see we’ve done pretty well for ourselves in the last decade. You know ten years ago when I thought about our high school reunion I wondered how my life would compare with the rest of the class. Last night when I was flying into Seattle I realized that it doesn’t really matter. Comparing ourselves to each other is at most an exercise in futility. I mean, how can you really measure success or happiness? There is no single correct path to follow, but there certainly are many to choose from.

Maybe you made millions, maybe you just made good friends, maybe you set sail for the other side of the world, or maybe you anchored your life in Woodinville. I guess what I’m getting at is that no matter where you’ve gone or what you’ve done, my hope is that each of you have lived your life in your own way, and that over the past ten years, living that life makes you feel happy and successful. So talk to your fellow classmates about their lives tonight. Listen to their stories and find out the answers to those burning questions. Because while it’s already been ten great years since the class of 96 graduated, who wants to wait another ten years? Thank you.