A few weeks ago, I went to my tenth anniversary high school reunion. Up until last year, I was really concerned about it. You see, I graduated with a bunch of overachievers, and still managed to get the highest SAT score and be voted "most intellectual." Yet as recently as 2003, I was working as a security guard. Being a security guard is an honest job, understand; it's just that . . . it's a little short of what people expected of me (and what I expected of myself). Since I got this job as a college professor, though, I've been looking forward to going back.

Some people aren't interested in going back to their high school reunions. They may have had a bad time in school, didn't make friends, or for some other reason just want to put the past behind and move on with their lives. I understand that attitude. I only had a couple of close friends in high school, and I've been in contact with them since graduation anyway. The thing is, though, I had a lot of acquaintances I wanted to check up on. There was a core group of about half-a-dozen overachievers that I had been in school with since preschool. While we never had any sort of "deep" friendship, they were always around, and were my partners and competitors for over a dozen years. I've always wondered how they turned out.

Well, they turned out about like I expected. The valodictorian was in medical school, the salutatorian was a pharmacist, the girl who beat me for highest GPA in sixth grade was a national director of corporate marketing for Bank of America. (Although, interestingly enough, the architect wanna-be jumped ship to become a building foreman.)

One of the things that struck me was how poorly so many of the cute cheerleaders had aged. Not so much that they were fat -- they just had crows' feet around their eyes, and just looked obviously older and trying not to show it. Only two of them still looked as attractive as they did when they graduated. Afterwards, I finally decided what it was: most of them had repeatedly tanned themselves, and the skin was starting to break down, causing wrinkles and mild discoloration.

I exchanged pleasantries with everyone, then retired to a side table with my best friend, Dann, and his wife. We left after an hour or so.

Apparently, we left too early. A friend of mine who stayed informed me a few days later that I had won the "most unchanged" vote. Well, that could be good or bad, depending on how people remembered me from high school. (Then again, the guy who was voted "most changed" had come out of the closet and declared his homosexuality, so it could be worse.)

I've satisfied my curiosity about how they turned out. But I've realized I really don't care too much about where they go from here. I've had too many things happen to me since graduation, and I never really "knew" them on any sort of deep level, so there's no real reason for me to go back for any other reunions.

A final note: a colleague of mine at the college was standing in line at the checkout counter in town and overheard a conversation between the person in front of her and the cashier. They were talking about the tenth anniversary high school reunion they had recently attended. One of them said to the other, "Yeah, I guess that girl who's out in Southern California and Mark [last name removed for privacy] are the two most successful ones. Imagine, being a college professor! And here I am, working as a cashier." She was not able to tell me who the people were, and I decline to guess.

But I feel my past has been laid to rest -- all the questions and uncertainties, all the loose ends I left dangling when I graduated, have been tied off.

As Dann told me a few years ago when I was agonizing over some question about high school, "High school's over. You won!"