Twenty Years

I got a phone call tonight from someone that I haven't spoken to or see since high school. 2006 will be the 20 Year Reunion of my home town's graduating class of 1986. (I didn't graduate in Lead.r, but I went to school for most of my youth with that group of people).

Wow. Since I didn't graduate with them, I am so impressed that they thought to include me in the reunion invite. I am dying of squirrel curiosity to find out how people have changed and how they are the same.

The organizers are running it in conjunction with Lead.r's annual "Wild West Days", as well as with the Germans-from-Russia Heritage Festival (biennial event). This way if only 10 people show up, there will still be a dance (oompah band?!?) and a pancake breakfast, and the organizers don't have to wear themselves out planning all sorts of big events. Some smart thinking there. I was really pregnant the first year they held the Germans from Russia festival, or I would have gone to learn how to make German farmer sausage, the way it's meant to be made.

The most fascinating thing about tonight's conversation was that the woman I talked to (my old classmate) has a Lead.r accent. I didn't even know there was a Lead.r accent, but she sounds distinctly like one of my cousins from down there. I always thought it was just the way my cousins talked. When I was from Lead.r, none of 'us' had an accent but my cousins still had a residual German thing going on that they 'must have brought in from living on the farm'. Who knew we all talked that way. I must conclude that if I had stayed in Lead.r, then, I would still talk with an accent that I didn't know existed. Whoa.

By the way, I saw a billboard recently where "Whoa!" was spelled "Woah!" A billboard. Out in public. Reminds me of the accidental Canadianism I saw last year in a PowerPoint presentation at a library conference: "eh voila!"