Alien abductions peak in the month of July. Is it a coincidence that is also the most popular month for high school reunions? I don’t think so.

Nothing makes you feel more like you’ve been abducted by aliens than a high school reunion. My 50th is being held this year in Chilton, Wis., on July 15. Experience tells me this will be a strange adventure. Even though everyone wears a name tag, who looks the same after 50 years? At my 30th reunion, fellow classmates would approach me expecting a warm reception but I didn’t have a clue who they were. They probably wrote it off as my being an idiot.

If I come back in another life I want to be the Village Idiot. No one in their right mind is going to ask the Village Idiot for advice. No expectations. What a great life that would be.

High school reunions are the one night when football heroes and cheerleaders from decades past once again are adored. The quarterback could show up with a walker and respirator and still be Fonzie. Fame and fortune doesn’t improve your chances of being accepted either. Janis Joplin attended her 10-year high school class reunion in 1970 at Port Arthur, Texas. I remember watching the live video of her interview when she said her classmates “laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state.” Yet she assumed now that she was famous they would treat her differently. That didn’t happen. Some things never change. Check it out on YouTube.

Not that I am one to seek wisdom from a sitcom, but Lou Grant on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” had a great line about reunions. He told Mary Richards “The best reunion is the one where you don’t know anyone.” I couldn’t say it any better. So why do we even attend our high school reunions? Perhaps spending time with old high school classmates reminds us of a world so much simpler. Or just a time when we all had a full head of hair.

The Coeur d’Alene Class of 1967 will also be celebrating its 50-year reunion this summer. If you belong to that class, I wanted you assure you I did reach out to you. I searched Facebook Groups for reunions and went so far as to contact a local reporter but apparently no one knows anything about the Coeur d’Alene High School class of 1967. Is it because we’re that old? Or the entire class of ’67 mysteriously disappeared?

Today is my birthday. I am now 68. I can vividly remember my first day in high school. As I was walking the up the stairs to the third floor I noticed a small group of seniors gathered around a locker. They looked so old. Some of them even had mustaches! Now I am old enough to be their grandfather. How did I get to this age of 68? Can any of you relate to this?

If you judge the world by beer commercials, no one cares about anyone past the age of 26. Maybe that explains why no one seems to know anything about the Coeur d’Alene class of 1967. If you are in my generation know that we are amazing and deserve to be respected and admired. Yet I cannot find anyone who graduated from Coeur d’Alene high school 50 years ago. It’s like an episode right out of “The X-Files."

You might think Coeur d’Alene is a small town but my hometown of Chilton, Wis., only had a population of 3,500. In comparison, Coeur d’Alene is a bustling metropolis. I can still remember how we threw a huge celebration when the town got its first stop light. If you graduated from Coeur d’Alene High School in 1967 and have been abducted by aliens you might not realize just how much your city has changed. However, you can take great solace in knowing that it’s still a damned fine place to remember as home, even if you are light-years from North Idaho.