Since being on Facebook, I have been in touch with several old classmates that I hadn’t thought about in 40+ years. There was a 40th reunion of the Class of 1969 this past summer, but I was not able to attend. Neither did I attend my 20th or 30th. There was always something stopping me from going. My loss. It would have been nice to reconnect with people who knew me when.
Yesterday, I took out my Dawnwood Junior High School and Newfield High School yearbooks to jog my memory of those years in my life. So much has happened between 1964 when I entered the 7th grade and 1969 when I graduated high school. Now, my brain is clogged with 45 years of stuff and, try as I might, I can’t shake out many memories from back then. I wish I would have taken the time to write a journal, take some pictures or do something that would have helped me later to recall the fun times, the heartbreaks, the experiences I had back then. Kids today have it much better. With affordable digital cameras, online social networks and blogs they can record their entire life without much effort and recall it down the road to relive again and again. I see my granddaughters doing it.
The one regret I have after looking through all the yearbooks was that I didn’t make the most of my school years. I didn’t really get involved. I didn’t join in enough.
The only group I remember being involved with through all three years of Jr. High was Chorus. I loved to sing. Still do. Also, I saw my picture in the German Club for 9th grade. (Was machst du heute nach der Schule? Translation: What are you doing after school today?) But I don’t remember anything about German Club. What did we do in that club? Anybody?
In my sophomore and junior years I didn’t do or join anything. In my senior year, I joined the Quadrangle staff (probably because I was dating Don Neidhart who was the Sports Editor) as a contributing writer (I wrote a column about what was going on in other schools) and I was involved in the senior production (I wrote the Excederin Headache #69 commercial and co-starred in it with Marc Capobianco).
When the 1969 Medietas came out, I remember feeling sad when I looked up my name and there were only two numbers listed beside it, #95 and #200, the pages on which my picture appears. One was my senior picture and the other the group picture of the Quadrangle staff. Aside from class head shots, there were many other pictures in the yearbook, but I was only in one of them. I remember looking at the senior pictures and seeing all the activities, sports and clubs other seniors were involved in and the number of years they were active and thinking I wish I had done more. But it was too late. You can’t go back and relive your school days again. You only get one shot. But if I could, I would do it differently.
If I could talk to a bunch of 7th graders today, I would tell them the key to a successful and fulfilling academic experience is to get involved. Join a club, sing in the choir, play sports, get to know as many people as possible, have the best school spirit you can have, attend all the games, plays and events you can get to, and record as much of it as you can in photos and journals. There will come a time, maybe 20 or 30 or 40 years later, when you will be glad you did.
To be continued . . .
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