My high school class had a reunion this summer. We graduated 45 years ago in ’63 and we will be 63 years old this year. I decided against attending given the expense and hassle of traveling along with a previous commitment to myself that I needed relaxing time in my own back yard after a demanding schedule of responsibilities over the past several months.

I still have very vivid and fond memories of my high school years and of the people with whom I shared that experience. More vivid and fond than later educational experiences, of which I have had many.

I am not sure why high school experiences engender so much nostalgia and spawn so many reunions. I think perhaps because high school comes midway during the adolescent period which is one of the major passages in human development from the dependent child to the emergent adult.

So much happens in a few short years that is driven by peer pressure, hormones, and a developing frontal lobe of the brain that generates a unique logic about the world that totally escapes the understanding of parents and other adults.

Impulsivity easily trumps emergent reasoning because adolescence does not lend itself to deep reflection about the many choices that suddenly become available for which there is so little preparation in the process of “growing up.”

We know of this from being parents and from working with parents of teenagers over the recent years. “Why would you do something so stupid?” parents have been known to ask. We remind them not to expect a carefully worded rationale from their teenager. The teenager simply did something stupid for no good reason other than it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

So it seems that high school reunions celebrate and mark this special passage in our human development by a reconnecting with it periodically through the years. They are “wonder years” more so than any other time and generate many memories to be relived fondly.

The topic of my high school years came up at the dining room table with our granddaughters who sometimes ask if high school and other such things were invented when we were young.

I related a memory about being voted “best dressed” in high school and how shallow and uninteresting it was to be recognized in that manner. Who would care 45 years later that I was best dressed in the class, I said? Certainly not me, given the current state of my wardrobe.

My 9 year old granddaughter, who is given to unusual and witty comments of the very dry variety said “What about being the most likely to go to jail.”

After my burst of laughter subsided, I acknowledged that my own high school experience and adolescence would have obviously been much more interesting and memorable if I had behaved in ways that made people fear for my future. I think being the most likely to go to jail would have given me much greater stature at high school reunions than being best dressed. Who remembers?