High School Reunion

I happened to be in my hometown during our 40th high school reunion.

It turned out to be unexpectedly therapeutic.

We danced to the music of our youth — Hotel California, The Wall, Supertramp — the disco years that once felt endless. 

Almost everyone was there.

At one point, I walked toward two of my childhood friends. We were born on the same street, just a few houses apart — boys who grew up sharing the same sidewalks, the same summers, the same dreams of getting out.

As I approached the ballroom windows where they were standing, I overheard their conversation.

“Vasıf,” Atilla asked, “how many passengers does your plane carry?”

“Twelve,” Vasıf replied. Then he smiled. “How many does yours?”

“Six,” Atilla said.

Vasıf immediately flashed victory signs with both hands, as if he’d just won a high-stakes bet.

Atilla paused, then added quietly,

“But I have two of them.”

* * *

We have a high school group chat. We stay in touch as much as life allows. Whenever someone travels to New York, I pick him up at the airport and take him to his hotel. We usually meet for dinner around their business schedules. On one of those JFK runs, Atilla arrived with two younger men in dark suits. I dropped all three of them at the Waldorf Astoria. That entire week, I didn’t hear a word from him. They were completely tied up in meetings. On Friday, I flew to Puerto Rico for the weekend.

When I arrived at my hotel, my phone rang. It was Atilla.

“Are you alive?” I asked.

He laughed. “I waited for the market to close. Now it’s safe to tell you.”

Then he said it calmly, almost casually.

“I bought Godiva Chocolates for one billion dollars. The press release goes out Monday.”

I wished him a safe trip home.

Vasıf, with his twelve-passenger plane, went on to build much of Moscow City’s high-rise skyline on a fifty-year land lease.

Levent — whose name I mentioned earlier on that deserted island in the Bahamas — packaged the company he took over as CEO and sold it five years later for $900 million.

Some of my childhood friends have far more interesting stories to tell.

They just didn’t write the book.