Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Thoughts on High School

This week Liz graduated High School. It was a week of family and friends, of parties and ceremonies, of looking forward and looking back. It was a week of speeches full of youthful earnestness. Of exhortations to do great things, but to always remember how it all started; here at this school, at this time, with these people.

I have to believe that someone once told me similar things in a similar setting; but if they did I've forgotten them. The internet and social networking sites allow us to bridge the years and connect with names from the past. I look down the list of my former classmates, proud graduates of Ocean Township High School '76, and try to remember. I recognize the names, and can see some of their teen-aged faces in my mind's eye; but no memories come to the surface. When I passed them in the hallway, did we say hello? Did we share a table in the cafeteria?

My friends from those days are still fresh in my memory. Those who have been a part of my life since those days, as well as those recently resurfaced, will always be with me. But who are these others? I know we were told to remember how it all started, but I have to wonder if high school was the place and time when it did.

Consider. If, through the steady march of technology, you were granted the ability to go back to any time in your life. A one-time trip, in which you would re-experience everything, unable to change anything. How far back would you go? Would anyone really go back to high school?