Editor’s note: This column first appeared in 2011. It is being reprinted this week because I saw my first morning glory, one of the highlights of my week, and because the entire press crew is waiting. Happy Labor Day.

I’m laughing a lot this week: the morning glories are in bloom.

You’re right. There is nothing inherently funny about morning glories, but there is a story there.

We were seniors, all wrapped up in all the things that seniors do. It was time to select class officers, class flowers, a class motto – all meaningless in the scheme of life, but stupidly important when one is wrapped up in the drama of it.

Karen was the SGA president and proposed her “legislation.” Although she’d managed to get elected SGA president, she didn’t understand the political process. The boys in our group did.

I can still see John walking around campus with the “F” encyclopedia, perusing the glossy, color pages that illustrated flowers. For some reason, the morning glory caught his eye.

On the afternoon before the vote, the boys finished their agenda, finding a motto they deemed more interesting than the SGA’s proposed one. It was on the back of a bottle they were too young to buy and the contents of which they consumed at the country club.

It took no time for them to get to work lining up votes. I can still hear the shock in Karen’s voice when they won. “You can’t decorate with morning glories.”

In her mind, the class flower was to be the centerpiece of every graduation party and every reunion in our future, likely a rose or a carnation.

I was as amused then as I am almost three decades later. We didn’t realize it that day, but we had witnessed the birth of a very successful politician, never dreaming what he’d accomplish.

I’m willing to bet that there are few people who remember this many years later that their class had a flower, much less what it was. I’m one of the lucky ones. When the weather turns, I see reminders on fence rows, stumps and growing wild on the roadside.

Such is the case this week, I realized as I drove toward Brewton Thursday. The “flowers” amused me and brought back sweet memories for my drive.

So I braked, pulled over, and sent a group text message to four childhood friends.

“Am driving in the country and there are morning glories on every fencepost. Reminds me that I love you all.”

In the end, that’s what matters; these little things from our past that bind us together always. I’m grateful that the morning glories remind me to tell them that they are still important, and always will be.