I did something that two years ago I would have insisted, INSISTED, that I was never going to do.

I went to my twenty year high school reunion .

Admittedly, my attendance was primarily the result of that diabolical digital crack and temple to professional procrastination, Facebook. In the 18 months that I've participated on that site (I know, I'm late to the game but seriously, did *I* need to spend more time on the internet?) I've come in contact with some 220 of my former classmates, at least a dozen of which date back to elementary school - the people I've known the longest in life that don't share any of my genetic code.

When I graduated from Sahuaro High School in 1989, my family had already moved to Dallas. I left shortly thereafter when I moved to Flagstaff. Upon graduation, I landed squarely behind the Orange Curtain, and with the sole exception of Matt and Jenny, I had virtually no contact to any of my former Sahuaro classmates. No news. No updates. No nada.

I even managed to forget that I graduated with Brooke Burke, and really, nobody wired like me should ever forget something like that.

Crackbook, obviously, changed all that. And when confronted with all these people who helped shape the person that I am today, good or bad, I was suddenly and dramatically compelled to go.

To be certain, I was nervous. First and foremost, reunions ride on a wave of nostalgia that inevitably force an assessment of where you are and from where you are from. And sometimes, depending on your perspective, that assessment isn't particularly positive. This year, well, let's just say I had to climb a little higher than normal to find a reasonable vantage point for my life.

Second, with so much time and distance separating me from my peers, I wondered just how much we would have to talk about. Twenty years separated by thousands of miles and endless experiences. Recognition was in question, let alone connection. I might have made the trip for no more than overpriced margaritas and a resort tan in my home town.

But I was wrong - and wonderfully so. First of all, if you are the kind of person who chooses to attend a reunion, I would argue that you are already the kind of person who would be engaging and curious (and/or just mildly masochistic). Second, it was precisely those twenty years that made everyone so compelling. Even the typically mundane events of living, when stretched over a quarter lifetime provide for terrific stories. In every life there will be success and failures, joys and tragedies. And as a collective, the fodder for engaging conversation was near limitless - especially when fueled by a little bit of beer and my own well-known predisposition to hearing myself talk.

And as for recognition, remarkably, the vast, vast majority of the time, when confronted with each new face from the past, that dusty mental rolodex popped open and their name was right on my tongue. More interesting were those whose memories were buried deeper under all the insipid trivia that comes from nearly two decades of internet access. Although that first hello and handshake left me racing for recall, eventually a mannerism or a word or a smile would spark an explosion of memories as bracing and sudden as a jump into a cold lake in springtime.

I had a ball. I saw Chris, my best friend from grade school for the first time since 1989. Chris and Traci and CJ and Marie and Holly and Lisa - hell. We go back all the way to Mr. Bigelow and his orange flagged bicycle in fifth grade. Marie still has her stamp collection. And, embarrassingly, so do I.

Jenny and Sherry and Amy and Stacy all know what I look(ed) like in pantyhose, and despite a near decade of blogging about shit that my mother REALLY wishes I hadn't, even the internet hasn't seen THAT.

My discussion with Alex and Kayo reminded me why I have always liked them, and why I'm not even remotely surprised at their chosen professions. I would sell a kidney for AJ's hairline (seriously AJ, Roger Federer wants his "do" back), and I'm pretty sure that Johnny could still pin a rabid wolverine with his abs alone.

And to everyone, DAMN. You all look GREAT. Even without the zip around jeans and mullets and pastel.

The hyper self-awareness and self-discovery of adolescence that separated kids was long removed, and two decades has a wonderful way of smoothing away the sharp edges of most bad memories, taking what might once have been piercing shards and polishing them to colorful moments as gentle and opaque as sea glass. And once that group of old friends and acquaintances was brought back together, what I found wasn't that we no longer had anything in common but rather, that despite all the time and experiences that separated us, we all had something that did.

A common history.

I guess you can go home again.

To everyone who participated in our reunion, thank you for a fantastic weekend, and for reminding this seasoned (and occasionally jaded) traveler that the farther you have wandered, the better the homecoming.