A 35-year-old pact - only once in a thousand years

Still it's like the prom - sure to be a disappointment, but you know you've got to go because in 30 years your kids are going to ask whom you were with.

This leads me to the current dilemma: Where to be at the turn of the century.

Since it became obvious my first plan, a trip to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl, would surely fall through, I've been on the prowl for a new destination.

Travel agents are advertising trips on the Concorde for the super rich to hit multiple destinations at midnight around the world. The super brave are heading to the center of the action, planning on lining up in Times Square. Only Jerusalem and Micr

Heather Kamins Kandid Kamins

osoft seem more unstable at zero-hundred hours. And the super paranoid have already begun building cabins in Montana and hoarding away packets of hot cocoa to ensure safety.

Perhaps what I'll end up doing is what seems inevitable, a repeat of my recent New Year's Eves. What usually happens is a group of my high school friends spend most of the day playing phone tag, attempting to come up with a plan. At about 4 p.m., someone gets the brilliant idea that we should all dress up, grab a classy dinner and then hit some kind of bar/party. After everything else falls through, we find ourselves in Windsor, bribing bouncers for admittance into festivities for which the rest of the free world has made reservations.

But at least we're together. Nearly four years since graduation, we only talk sporadically during the school year. But that's who I want to remember entering the new millennium with. I guess you could say it runs in the family.

My father left his hometown Chicago at the age of 17 to come to the University and never looked back. I've never met any of his high school friends. I've never even heard him tell stories about those days - that is until recently, when he started making his Y2K plans.

The story goes back 35 years, that part's for sure. The details are now being debated, but it's the endpoint that is important, so I'll share the story I grew up with. My father was part a tight knit group of 10 friends who named themselves the Zeolites. Although my father claims he came up with it, how they got that name differs depending on whom you ask.

They did the things boys do in high school: play hockey, eat pizza, study and meet girls. And, of course, they pledged to stay close. They hung out during vacation from school. The first summer back after a year at college, my father wrote a musical play about the trials of college life. They were close enough that they took it seriously and performed it in front of their former classmates.

And it's difficult to pinpoint when they began to drift apart.

My father hadn't talked to any of them in at least 20 years. They could be married. Maybe they have kids. Maybe one of them still acts like a kid. He doesn't know if there's a doctor in the group, an accountant or maybe a taxidermist.

Since my father never talks about them I assume he doesn't think too much what has happened to them either. Did anyone get sent to Vietnam? Have they been fulfilled? Do they still look the same?

All I know is that I have never met them. Even the Mather High School 30th year reunion was cancelled due to lack of interest. They've never called each other on their birthdays. We've never had plans to visit them for Thanksgiving. My father never tried to look them up when we visited Chicago.

But my father always knew that he'd see them again.

During their senior year of high school, the Zeolites promised to meet 35 years later on the steps of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry on Jan. 1, 2000 at noon.

My father remembers hearing that the museum is opening a time capsule at noon that day. Some of the other members of the group thought the meeting time would be midnight. Each recalls the plan differently. Nonetheless, all but one (whose employer, IBM, is mandating that he stay on call in Dallas) are returning from across the country for this reunion.

They're not sure what they are going to do. They're virtually strangers, who knew each other at the age of 17. But they've decided on one thing, a reading of that old play my father wrote in 1965. Aptly, it ends with this ballad, sung to the tune of "Hey Look Me Over."

Four years at Mather

Ended we know.

Then off to college most of us did go.

And in three more years,

Well, more or less,

What we'll be doing or where we'll be is anybody's guess.

And then we'll all start our life's work -

Marry and such -

And very likely

We'll all get out of touch.

But let's make an effort to stay together

We shouldn't stay apart.

Let's finish what we start.

That's what they're going to do - finish what they started. Maybe my father will even write a new song for the occasion.

- Heather Kamins can be reached over

e-mail at hbk@umich.edu.

11-11-99