Three fears of Stashu’s high school reunion

Only a therapist should go

I saw my old friend Stashu Golabki the other day. He was sitting on his front porch scrolling through his cell phone. I asked him if he was telling others about his recent high school reunion.

“Sure, although I won’t tell them what I was really feeling before I went,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“I had three fears going into that reunion, and I almost didn’t go.”

“What were they,” I asked, wondering if we were heading into a direction that only a therapist should go – but Stashu is not the type of guy who would ever do anything like that.

“First of all, I knew my old girlfriend was going to be there, and didn’t know what to say to her.”

“Wouldn’t you just say, hello, and how has it been going for the last fifty years?”

“Don’t be smart with me,” he retorted, adjusting his Cubs cap. “Actually, we just made small talk and things turned out well. I guess we both put aside whatever bad blood there was between us.”

Millionaire success

“And what was the second fear?” I asked.

“My second fear was that everyone else was going to be a millionaire, and I was only a pipefitter for all those years.”

“What did you find?”

“No one was a millionaire. As a matter of fact, many people bounced around from one type of unrelated job to another. At least I had a pension when I retired.”

“And what was the third fear?”

“I didn’t know whether the school bully was going to show up,” he said, taking a swallow from a can of Red Bull. “I thought the bully might do a follow-up to what he did in the fourth grade – steal the turtle that I brought for show and tell. He might want to throw a cup of pop in my face.”

“Did you run into him?” I asked.

“No, I found out he died five years ago in prison.”

“So I guess you had a good time?”

“Yes,” he answered. “And all those bad things never took place.”