The Fib, Lie, Untruth, Whatever you want to call it....

One by one, my class reunion committee members have been finding classmates' information. The goal is to find as many classmates as possible to be able to invite them to the next big class reunion. One of the members said, "Oh, Brian lives in my neighborhood. I will see if I can get his email address so that we can send him reunion updates quickly." By the next committee meeting, she had obtained the email address to go along with his home address. Great! We were happy to add him to the list.

The next email updates were sent out to the class and Brian was included with the list. That night I received an email back from Brian. To my surprise, he wrote that I was mistaken that he was in my class. He said he had graduated in the class before mine. An untruth. A fib. An outright lie. Could I please take his name off of the list of contacts?

Wow! I was stunned. Surprised. Shocked. We had some classmates, who, when contacted, asked to not be contacted any further concerning reunions. They had their reasons, I am sure. We didn't ask why. But the difference was: they didn't lie about it.

We have been talking it over as to why Brian did that. Some classmates thought he was a jerk for doing what he did. Some thought it was a cheap way out. A stupid excuse for not getting together with old friends. My thought was that perhaps Brian's high school years and memories were not as happy as his classmates. I didn't know him well, so I really had no idea. Perhaps his memories were so painful that he couldn't bear to see classmates again. Whatever his reasons, I wrote back and said that we would, of course, honor his request and remove his contact information from the list.

However, Brian and I had a moment in time that I could never forget. Graduation night. I will always have the memory of graduation night at Whitney's farm, way out in one of the pastures, of smooching with Brian while the rest of the class was drinking all around us. He had great hair, like a surfer-boy, long, but not too long, dirty blond. We were an incongruous couple. I am not even sure how or why we ended up together. He was in the drama club and I was into sports. He was friends with a friend of mine, with whom we had both come to the "party". We spent a bit of time that night in each other's company, thoroughly enjoying each other without any future thoughts. I was in heaven for a few hours. We never saw each other again but the memories are still lovely.