All the parking spots on Main Street in Smithtown are full, so I round the corner and park in the lot behind Napper Tandy’s Irish Pub — my destination for this 50th reunion of Hauppauge High School graduates.

I slip inside to find a mass of people, faces vaguely familiar but, well, older. I’m scanning faces nervously when suddenly time stops as he appears. The boy next door — my childhood crush. I never thought I'd see him again. But as he leans toward me in the crowded room, and says his name, I am instantly 12 again. We smile at each other in shocked delight. Four hours disappear in a minute. We marvel at the passage of time and share stories of triumph and loss — a major one for me: the recent death of my father. We share a dance, contact info, an embrace goodbye. Then I'm thrust back

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