High School

We moved to Lawrenceville my junior year, and I didn't graduate with my class in Cochran, the class of 1966.

Yesterday I got a photo album from the 50-year-reuinion and I had to write Betty (who didn't attend either) and ask her, "Who are all these old people at our reunion?"  She'll know.

I recognized five people--all women.  The men were unrecognizable.  One woman was in a wheel chair, one man was on oxygen, but most of the people seemed to be having a good time dancing and laughing and posing for a group picture the way we did in high school.

There was a panel of memorials to the 17 people who had died since high school--including one couple who died in a plane crash in the 70s.  Their high school pictures were pasted on the board along with information about when they had died and where they were buried.

One was missing.  My first boyfriend in elementary school, a sweet boy named Jim McCoy, died in a car crash around our fortieth birthdays.  In a class of a hundred, it's hard to imagine that one death went unrecognized--but Betty just emailed me that he moved after I did and didn't graduate with the class.

We had a teacher/coach in eighth grade whom most of my classmates love.  I don't love him.  I remember how he gave Jim McCoy a present in front of our whole 8th grade class for being manager of the basketball team, how Jim took the wrapped present and went to the back of the class to open it, and how humiliated he was when he opened it.  It was a box of women's underwear.

Laughter filled the room and I met Jim's eyes and he looked devastated.  His face was deep red and tears were in his eyes.  Coach Niblett seemed to think it was hilarious, as did all the players on the team, but I'm sure Jim remembered that horrible day for the rest of his life.  Bullying is not a new thing.

For many people, high school was a rollicking good time and they still like to reconnect with their classmates every few years.  Probably in part because I was dating a college boy throughout high school, I don't have those same fond memories--except with Betty who can remember all the ups and downs and people in our classes from first grade onward!

High school is such a tiny slice of life, and ours was devoted to conformity and competition.  When you're in high school, that's your world, but when you move far away in time and geography, the opinions of those particular people matter less and less.  Long ago, Betty and I knew that and moved on....