Homecoming means coming home, doesn't it?

This is the story of my high school's homecoming in -- well, I think it was 1966 or '67 -- a couple years after I graduated (in 1964).

I met up with an old school chum named Al (Class of 65'), who was home from college for the weekend. For something to do on Saturday night, we decided it would be fun to go to the homecoming dance.

I put on a dress, Al put on a coat and tie, and we got to the school around 9:00. We went in and approached a group of chaperones and teachers who were sitting at a table outside the cafeteria where the dancing was going on. We asked if we needed tickets and, if so, could we please buy them.

And they said -- no, you can’t come to this dance. It’s just for students.

And we said -- but we are alumni. We appealed to a couple teachers who remembered us who gladly verified that we had been students at that very high school

So we said -- see? We used to be students, which makes us alumni, and that is what homecoming is for, isn't it?

But they were adamant. They refused to let two alumni into the homecoming dance.

So we went away, disappointed. What we did that evening, I don’t remember. I wonder if Al remembers this happening.

What made me think of this story is that last night Michigan State University and at least two area high schools cancelled homecoming parades (and possibly football games for the high schools) because of the threat of bad weather.

They were not being alarmist – the storms actually did come, and they were doozies.

Be kind, rewind

People post things on Facebook all the time that are intended to help us improve ourselves. Just now I saw one that my wife shared, although I don’t know who put it out there originally. It was writ large in white letters on a black background so that it stood out, and it said:

You seriously have no idea what people are dealing with in their personal life. So just be nice, it's that simple.

I agree with that, but I also know it presents two inherent difficulties. One is, any person who is generally not nice will not suddenly renounce their nastiness and be kind to everybody from now on just because they read that on Facebook. It is just not going to happen. In fact, I don’t think all the Facebook platitudes that remind us to be nice to each other, which number in the gazillions, have any chance of helping those people who are just plain grouchy and taking it out on everybody else.

The second problem is that while we are being nice because we know people are dealing with things we don’t know about, it will not improve our interactions with such persons.

Take, for instance, that man at work who is mired in a perpetual bad mood. He grunts replies, he is unpleasant in every way, and he makes no effort to slide nicely along with his coworkers. As a result, you consider him a real jerk, and he annoys the hell out of you.

Then you find out that his wife has left him for another man, his twelve-year-old son was just diagnosed with Asberger Syndrome, his mother has colon cancer, his teenaged daughter wrecked the car, and he’s having trouble making ends meet.

Once you understand what a horror his life has become, you understand why he growls and is grumpy and makes no effort to get along.

But understanding will not solve any of the problem. He will still annoy the hell out of you, and he will still act like a real jerk.

But if you’re nice, you’ll find your reward in heaven.