My 20th high school reunion was in 2008. I did not attend. I do not really keep in touch with anyone from high school. Jen's 20th high school reunion was this past November. We attended and had a great time. This past Sunday, we attended another reunion. It was the 10 year reunion of my police academy class. I am not sure if other academy classes have reunions. It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years. In fact, it has been a little longer than that. It does not seem like I started that academy "just yesterday", but it does not seem like 10 years have passed. The reunion was organized by our class secretary. She decided that she wanted to have a reunion and she coordinated, planned, and pulled off the entire event. She had some help from a few classmates, but it was largely her production. Our class president is no longer an officer (the city frowns upon double dipping) and I was the class vice president (my buddies in the academy thought it would be funny to nominate me for a leadership role in the class). It never even entered my mind to plan a reunion. My academy class started with 76 cadets and 71 cadets graduated and became officers. There are still 59 of us employed by the department. Of the 12 that are gone, one passed away in a traffic accident, another was indicted, one retired for medical reasons, and the other 9 retired for various other reasons. One of my classmates is now a lieutenant and I think 12 are now sergeants with another one about to promote. 22 of us attended the reunion. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see each other. I guess that makes sense. Why else attend if you do not want to see everyone? I thought that we all looked pretty good after 10 years. No one had really changed very much, a pregnancy notwithstanding. I talked to people that I had not talked to since the academy. Overall it seemed like people were happy with their job. Everyone had found a niche in the department. Of those that attended, there are not very many left in patrol. Most have moved on to an investigative or specialized division. I think that there were two of us that had stayed in patrol at the same stations where we had trained. A couple of people commented that they thought that I would have promoted by now. If you would have asked me 10 years ago, I would have agreed with them. I did take the promotional exam about 5 years ago. I had probably the worst testing day of my life that day. No big deal. I am happy where I am right now and I enjoy training new officers. When it comes time for the next exam, I will probably take it and spend a little more time preparing for the test than I did last time. It was nice to see everyone at the reunion and I look forward to the next one in 10 years.
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