I missed my high school reunion this weekend. Well, it wasn't actually my high school - it was the high school I would have gone to if I had stayed in Sherwood Park and hadn't moved to Edmonton when I was 15. I would have liked to have seen how and where all my old classmates have ended up.

I lived in the Park for 10 years, enjoying the semi-rural life that it afforded. A good friend of mine lived two blocks away from my house on a real farm. They had lots of dogs, skidoos, a barn, a tractor that he knew how to drive, a dad that drank rum and coke in the afternoon, lots of trees and swamps to play in. We built tree forts, lost shoes in the mud and did all the things that elementary-school boys were supposed to do. I knew that farm life wasn't for me, but it was a nice vacation from what I felt was normal.

Extenuating circumstances (a big snowstorm) and general apathy kept me from going to the reunion at the Sherwood Park Inn (a three hour drive on good roads), but I wish I could have gone there last night.