When the teachers charged with commencement practice choreography issued the edict to pair up, boy-girl, double file, Sherry Johnson and I connected through nonverbal communication honed over 17 years. Eyebrows raised, head tilt, outstretched hand, palm up.

We knew each other from first semester American Government class. In October, right before the 1974 midterms, the teacher asked the class to split in two, organize and name our own political parties. Sherry and I were fellow travelers in the “Honesty Party,” post-Nixon resignation. Small talk as we pomp and circumstanced our way down the steps of Wichita’s Henry Levitt Arena.

“What are you doing this summer?”

“Working at Peter Pan on North Arkansas Avenue, then WSU in the fall,” she said. “I’m majoring in accounting.”

WSU came out “dub-yes-you.” Like all south-central Kansans, Sherry pronounced the avenue and the river which flowed through Wichita “are-KAN-zuhz.”

“What about you?”

“I work at Mr. D’s IGA in Sweetbriar. Moving into an apartment next week. Woodgate. With Endler and Inglewood.”

I didn’t share my notion of becoming a Major League Baseball play-by-play announcer. It wasn’t a plan, and you couldn’t really call it a goal, just a vague, ambiguous hope and an answer for my father and other authority figures interested in my life plan.

After the ceremony, I rounded up Endler and Inglewood to finalize our Woodgate move-in logistics. This work was conducted in Inglewood’s ’69 Barracuda. I was first to call shotgun, so Endler sat in the back and managed beer distribution. Miller Lite, because it was still a relatively shiny new product, and because at 17, I was unduly influenced by new and shiny. Bottles, because it was a special occasion.

“Everything you’ve always wanted in a beer,” Endler said, leaning forward and hoisting his high. Three shiny new adults, freshly minted and diploma’d high school graduates, now roommates. Inglewood and I recognized our cue and clinked our bottles with his.

“And less.” In unison.

Sherry had a plan. Four years at dub-yes-you learning the nuances of present value and owner’s equity, then count beans for fifty years.

Endler had a plan. His intellect and business acumen was light years ahead of the rest of us. He floated through high school like it was a box to be checked. We knew then, Endler was destined to become a millionaire.

In those early adult years, Inglewood hewed dangerously close to the boundaries society establishes separating right from wrong. He crossed over enough to learn what was at stake if he didn’t change his ways. I didn’t have a plan, other than to escape an oppressive father. The result was a young life lived in the moment, driven by three interchangeable priorities: Girls, cars and beer.

Our 50-year class reunion is set for this fall. We’ll review the motivation that led a group of teenagers to form an Honesty Party and consider whether those tenets might have value today. We’ll reminisce, talk about how interchangeable priorities fell by the wayside, to be replaced with ones informed by the second thought. How lessons from a life lived impulsively could only be learned the hard way.

How the confidence and optimism that vibrated through us the night we graduated high school in May 1975 were just the start of a life’s worth of joy and heartache. And how we learned along the way to seek the former and slog through the latter. How ambiguity and innocence, slowly, inexorably, sometimes painfully, became wisdom.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN. Follow his writings at mikematson.com .