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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

We were as young as we’d ever be.

It was a major celebration. Nobody can throw a wingding like a small town. There were class reunions, a dance, a car show, a parade and a bocce ball tournament. The same team wins the bocce ball tournament each year. They’re the Atlanta Braves of bocce ball. I had the pleasure of selling used books as a fundraiser for the library.

How do we measure our time on Earth? In years, days or moments? By calendars, clocks, weather events or class reunions? I went to my wife’s class reunion. Her class was composed of good people who weren’t as cool as my class, but I give them credit for trying.

We gathered in her classmate’s backyard and comfortably ensconced in bag chairs (and one rocking chair), we told stories. It was a setting that fostered a sense of belonging. We took photos of subjects who behaved as if they were cats in danger of being herded. It was a community conversation. We talked of friends, family, favorite teachers of reading, riting and rithmetic, foods, fun, folks, foolishness and Fords. We’d seen service stations become gas stations, which became convenience stores. We knew a time when roundabouts weren’t built around potholes, and SPAM, Wonder Bread and a Twinkie had been a proper meal. Many of the men had heard of the mythical board stretcher. Our lives had moved from when using scissors was power to driving cars that park themselves. We avoided the division and discord of politics. There was no anger looking for an argument. No one tossed any shade on another’s sunshine unless it was done in a joking manner. It was a refreshing review of things. We had high hopes and big plans. It took a lifetime, but we’d learned to control what we could control. Names escaped memories. It’s a tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon in which a person knows the name, but experiences retrieval failure.

We had shifted from kids whose lives were held together with peanut butter to become big boys and girls whose lives are held together by modern medicine. We’d grown up when grandparents said things like “jumping Jehoshaphat,” “fiddlesticks” and “heavens to Betsy,” while frowning at children saying “Gee whiz.” We had fender reveal parties to show off a new-to-us car and most of us knew someone who’d been a Dairy Princess or had injured a foot while kicking ice chunks from a car.

Old friendships burned brightly. We dragged out memories that covered us like a warm blanket on a cold night. We remembered the time a strong wind blew the gophers out of their holes and birds flew backward to keep from getting dirt in their eyes. Memories are sometimes flawed.

One of the group recalled the time a large school window had slipped its moorings and crashed onto his head while he was seated at his desk, which necessitated a trip to an emergency room. Another was given a signed check to make a purchase on behalf of his father-in-law. He said, “What if I make the check out for $100,000 and disappear?” His father-in-law didn’t miss a beat before replying, “Then it would be money well spent.”

One day, you’re assaulted by glass, the next day, a nonagenarian considers you trustworthy. That’s maturity.

We’ve reached the “hang in there” age where we ask a mirror, “Am I really as old as I am?” We spent little time sorting through the chaff. There was no need for a single “tsk, tsk” or a “tut, tut” even though we had failed to determine who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop or who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip.

We realize that every life makes a remarkable story. Life might not be exactly what we’d hoped it would be, but it’s not as we feared it might be either. It was tempted, but the world’s smallest violin played for no one. It’s a wonderful world, despite it all. We remember, but we can’t go back, we can only go forward.

The stories rocked. When I was a boy, there was a word wiseacres used to describe something indescribably wonderful. It was “fantabulous.”

The day was fantabulous.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.