The Class of 88 is Great!

And do I mean great! Everybody looked wonderful. I might have been the only one who added a pound for every year we've been out of school. We had a blast! Well...let me start at the beginning. After finally making it out of Nashville with only a couple of bumps in the road (see here), we landed in Philadelphia. We rented our car and drove straight to Millville, NJ. We got off at the old exit next to the mall so we could drive by my old house and BOY HAS IT CHANGED. There used to be a bunch of nothing there but now there are huge strip malls and shopping areas and loads of restaurants that weren't there before. I still managed to find the way to our old house. Not much had changed in the neighborhood but the tree to the left of the house was one my parents planted. It was tiny back then so that was weird. We were starving so I headed to Jim's Lunch. Jim's is famous for their burgers which you must order with "everything". Oddly, "everything" just means cheese, onions, and secret sauce. They're also only open from sometime in November until the end of May. The last time I was in Millville, it happened to be August so I missed out but I was ecstatic to find it open this time. We sat at the counter and my husband ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and mayo and then I proceeded to tease him, much to our waitress' delight, that at Jim's you order a cheeseburger with "everything". I savored every bite, it was soooo delicious. I think the waitress was confused by this clearly southern sounding girl who was so knowledgeable about a Jim's burger. I have been gone for 20 years and I definitely sound like it.

We then headed a little further down the road and stopped at the Harley Davidson dealership to see my old friend Sam. His family has owned the shop forever and it was BUSY. Guess the Harley crowd isn't suffering from the economy too much. My husband enjoyed finally meeting my old friend, Sam. He's the epitome of a 100% Italian guy from Jersey. So sweet and funny, he was a good friend. He's married with four kids now, bald, and still looks like he lifts weights daily and is really enjoying life. We laughed about the old times.

Next we went to Amy's house. We were staying with her overnight. She ran through the list of everyone who was coming and gave me the latest scoop on everyone. I was happy to have the last minute cramming session on who's who. We got dressed and headed to my friend Mary's. This was in large part the group I hung out with in school and in the neighborhood. I moved to Millville in the middle of my junior year so these were some of my first and closest friends.On the far left is Mary who often drove me to school and was a regular at the Jones/Carter house. The two in the middle are Amy (who we stayed the night with) and Susan. They both cheered with me in high school. Amy taught me to do a back handspring and Susan was our captain. She's the one who convinced me to try out. Gretchen is next. She is loads of fun and we often looked for trouble together. Robbie is on the right and he lived in our neighborhood too. Robbie rode the bus with me on my first day. I guess you could say he was the first person I met when I moved to Millville. We also got to see my friend Kenny who graduated a year earlier. I met Kenny at church camp before I moved to Millville.My husband and I ran into Kenny in New York City around New Year's Eve in 1995 when we were first dating and I brought him home with me to New Jersey for the first time. I hadn't seen Kenny since then and I was happy to tell him about all that had happened.

We finally headed to the Elk's Lodge and met up with the rest of my classmates. The time FLEW by. I didn't have any of those uncomfortable moments where I didn't remember someone. In fact, I didn't have time to talk with everyone I wanted to see. Some people didn't recognize me because I didn't have such HUGE hair. My husband was great. He didn't need to be babysat at all. He even made a few friends of his own.


Here he is with the husband of my crazy friend, Rhonda. I had such a blast catching up with her. She's a flight attendant with Jet Blue and he's a pilot. They just got married recently and were such a hoot. I bugged them to death about coming to visit us. You can see our husbands had fun acting goofy and trying to embarrass us and each other.

It all went by way too fast. We got up the next morning and had to head back to the airport. There are talks of a 25th reunion. They're thinking of having it in the summer. I'm all for that as it will be easier to get there and stay a couple of days and at least I might have a tan. Either way I look forward to seeing them all again. Thanks for the memories!