Time Flies

I registered on the website for my high school graduating class' 30th reunion today.
Boy, that just doesn't seem possible. How could it have been 30 years already?
Maybe I don't notice the time passing so much because I don't have kids of my own, but geez, that just can't be right. 30 years.
That makes me, um, middle aged.
(If I live to be over 90.)
There is a page at the site that lists classmates who are no longer with us. One of them is a guy I sat next to in alphabetical order since 8th grade. I sat next to him at eighth grade graduation, and again at high school graduation, and in many homeroom classes besides. It is very strange to think that he isn't out there still, waiting to get stuck with me in alphabetical order again. (Wouldn't happen now anyway, I've been married into a different part of the alphabet for 23 years now.)

I guess when you haven't seen people for years, you tend to think of them as being the same as the last time you saw them. So, all my friends from high school who haven't stayed in touch are still about 18 in my mind. Similarly, my students from my one full time class are still about 8 to me, even though I know they are in their 30s now, just like my nieces who were born the same year they were. I haven't seen them, so, they are still kids in my memory.
I wonder how many people still think of me as a much younger version of myself? I doubt my siblings do, really, but most of them haven't seen me lately, and they always kind of treated me like I was still a little kid even after I became an adult. Most of the people who were already adults when I was little are probably either not around anymore or can't remember that far back. Thank God my Mom is still around. She remembers, and she treats me like I'm a grown up. She knows me too well. We are much alike in many ways. I inherited many of my phobias from her, but I have my Pop's tendency to blow up and get stuff out of my system instead of holding onto it forever like Mom tends to.
Still, I just can't believe it has been so long since high school. Some days that feels like it happened to someone else, other days I feel like I'll wake up and have to head for my morning Art class again. (Hello Mr. Boyer, wherever you are! To this day I think of rubber cement as Elephant Snot because of you, and now there is a class full of kids who were mine in second grade who call it that, too.)
Time to climb back out of the nostalgia machine and get back to the 21st century, I guess.