"College Reunion" by Deidre Ng (Deidre Ng@aol.com). Every year each school throughout the entire world has a parents' night or something of the sort, when parents dutifully trot off to school and find out how the kiddies are doing. At the lower grade levels, nearly all the parents who can possibly do so show up; but as kids enter high school, the crowd of parents thins out substantially. Probably the single most common comment in teachers' lounges at this time of year is, "The parents I need to see never show up. The only parents I ever see around here are those whose children are already doing good work!"

We have a similar phenomenon here on this newsgroup. (After I noticed this analogy, I had to point it out to someone; and I figured you people would handle the analogy a little better than those in the teachers' lounge.) The writers who least need to revise their stories are the most likely to revise them before reposting those stories. This is the THIRD revision by Deidre Ng of this story. When she first posted it, I rated it a 10. So she revised it and reposted it; and it was even better. So I rated it a 10. At least this time, I have a new rating system, and so I can give it three 10's.

Briefly stated, this is a story about a passionate reunion between two woman who had previously been very fond of each other as college roommates. The author effectively moves back and forth among past and present scenarios. An interesting aspect of this story is that Deidre gets away with the use of the second person (you), which I normally find obnoxious. In most cases, "you" stories put the reader in a bad spot. For example, in the present case the "you" is a female lesbian (actually, a hearty bisexual); and so all males and many females would possibly have trouble identifying with that perspective. However, Deidre manages to use this point of view effectively. As an ultimate test, I asked my husband to read the story and to let me know if anything bothered him. He showed me what "bothered" him all right, and we had a delightful rest of the evening.

Incidentally, to encourage such revisions, I WILL consider revisions of old stories to be eligible when I make up my monthly and annual Top 15 and Top 100 lists.