Its a funny cycle that we go through in life. My daughter is 2, she goes to school 2 days a week and loves it. I know that by the time she is ready for kindergarten, she will want talk about it every day. However, by the time she is probably 10 or 11, she won’t want to talk about school at all (save for whenever the next dance or other social event is). What’s funny is that you eventually get to an age where you want to talk about school again. Typically it is some time after you have graduated for the last time and you want to revel in the nostalgia of times long past and the greatness that you lived in at that time. I’m about to do that now.
When I was attending college at James Madison University (http://www.jmu.edu) back in 1989, while participating in one of the most amazing organizations in the US (the marching royal dukes of JMU), I had the pleasure of meeting people that were part of a fraternity dedicated to serving that band and the others at JMU. It was an honor for me to have been able to pledge that fraternity in the spring of 1990 with the rest of my brothers. At that time, we were preparing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Eta Omicron (HO) chapeter of Kappa Kappa Psi, that had been founded in 1980.
This year they are celebrating their 25th anniversary. It was hard for me to acknowledge to my wife that it had already been 15 years since my sophmore year at JMU, it was hard for me to acknowledge it to myself. A lot has changed since I was an idealist hell bent on changing the world somehow. Now, a more conservative Dad, still trying to change the world, just doing it differently.
Here I am now. Part of another organization that has changed the world, the company I work for. While I only truly keep in touch with just a select few from my college days, I do often think of the folks that I haven’t kept in touch with. I realize that I do indeed miss them and wish that I could find a way to get together with them. Hopefully I’ll be able to see them when the 25th anniversary celebration happens, only it will be dangerously close to the due date of my second child. My priorities don’t need to be spoken in that case, do they 
At any rate, much has changed in the organization since my time. Sometimes I wonder if I were to attend a function if the brothers would be familiar with me at all. In any event, it is amazing work that you do, Kappa Kappa Psi. It is amazing and often underestimated and taken for granted. Enjoy your time, you only get to be 25 once, whether you are an organization, fraternity, student or cog in the wheel of the real world. If I don’t get to attend, tip your glass back once for me.
To the brothers of that fine brotherhood, AEA.
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