2417 Today's writing prompt

Our writing group rotates the responsibility for snacks and prompts. Two weeks ago we received the prompt that we read today, and it is on reunions. The prompt writer suggested 14 possible topics, each broken into even more narrow options.

I've written a lot about reunions, so I've really been scratching for something new to say. I've written an oral history that I gave to relatives at a 1993 reunion and I've expanded on the story about how that oral history came about; I've written about a cookbook for a family reunion and about a recipe in that reunion cookbook. I've written about our 40th class reunions; I've written about my husband's club (the Slobs) reunion; I've written about other people's reunions. If I dig around in my files, I'll find a poem I wrote about reunions. I've written about reunions of books and reunion of furniture, long separated. One of the first pieces I had published was about books long separated that had a reunion of sorts in a computer database, Bruce, Norma J. "A Bibliographic Field of Dreams," AB Bookman's Weekly for the Specialist Book World, 94, no.14 (1994): 1290-1302.

Yesterday I was waiting for the washing machine to finish a cycle and pulled a small album of extra photos off the shelves. There were photographs in it apparently that had not been included in our regular album. But like an answer to prompt-prayer, there were photos of the SLOBS (my husband's high school social fraternity) at a mini-reunion at our house. As I recall, we first met downtown at a hotel for lunch. One couple had come from Kentucky, one from Indianapolis, one from Akron, and we of course, live in Columbus. How this was decided, I don't remember, but probably Columbus was central and the nearest for everyone. Then after lunch, we came to our house. This photo of Danny, Duke, Bob and Dick, may not represent everyone who was at the hotel. We all had grown children, some had grandchildren.

SLOBS Reunion at our house
Because these photos are extras, I don't have the dates recorded so I had to narrow it down by hair styles and clothing. Dating photographs is something genealogist do all the time. So using my incredible powers of discernment, I notice that the shelving behind us went into my husband's office in the family room about 1995. I have on a snazzy sweats outfit--the bright colors indicate it had probably not yet been washed. We bought our cottage in the fall of 1988, so this outfit was probably purchased during the summer of 1989. Duke (the tall guy) still has dark hair; he now has white hair. My husband, shorter red head, actually has hair in this photo, which also places the photo in the late 1980s or early 90s. I have a curly perm, which puts it after the summer of 1989. We all seem to have on warm clothing, so I'm placing this as maybe January or February 1990. Later, I'll go look through our albums and see if I can find a date.

My husband was the only one thin enough to get into his letter sweater