The nine United Methodist Colleges in North Carolina, along with most other colleges in the state, will soon be observing alumni reunions on their respective campuses. Alumni will be encouraged to return to alma mater to see again the sights and hear again the sounds of their old college, visit with current and former faculty and staff, and relive, one more time, those wonderful, inspiring, perhaps raucous days gone by. Each year those stories will be embellished with memories that grow more faint and with a desire to add spice and excitement.

In England the same traditions prevail. Oxford and Cambridge alumni are always eager to celebrate "Old Boy Days," since for so long both Oxford and Cambridge were exclusively male bastions of learning. Such reunions are long-standing traditions. Each time alumni return they inevitably talk about how the campus has changed and how very young the students look. Obviously, that only reflects the fact that each year they are looking at the students through eyes that grow older and older.

As a young boy, John Wesley had gone to school at Charterhouse, a prominent boarding school. Some 40 years later, according to his Journal, he returns to the campus. He writes: "I wondered that all the squares and buildings, and especially the schoolboys, looked so little. But this is easily accounted for. I was little myself when I was at school, and measured all about me by myself."

Wesley continues to write that the upper boys, being then bigger than himself, all seemed so very big and tall, unlike what they appear now, that "I am taller and bigger than them."

Wesley goes on to make more general statements about the changes from generation to generation. He was always seeking ways to draw important and practical lessons from life: "I question if this is not the real ground of the common imagination that our forefathers, and in general men in past ages, were much larger than now -- an imagination current in the world eighteen hundred years ago. So Virgil supposes his warrior to throw a stone that could scarce be wielded by twelve men. … Whereas in reality men have been, at least ever since the Deluge, very nearly the same as we find them now, both for stature and understanding."

Oh how our imaginations can elaborate on a theme when prompted by sentimental and emotional settings. Such declarations will be heard throughout the state as alumni of our institutions return to Dear Old College this spring. Thanks for the memories.