We’re off to Tallassee again this weekend, joining millions of other holiday travelers on a Memorial Day trek. Getting away from the house and out of our routine will be a good thing.
My niece, Amy, graduates this weekend. My own high school graduation, some twenty-two years ago, remains vivid in my memory. I loved high school; having found my place in the odd social pecking order, I agonized over leaving it.
As the Big Date drew nearer, we tortured ourselves with sappy, manufactured sentiment, listening to the Alan Parsons Project’s Time over and over again. We embraced each other and wept over the lyrics: “Who knows when we shall meet again … if ever?”
Of all my friends, I was the only one with an ACT score high enough to take me to any college in the nation … and the only one being forced by his parents to stay home and attend the neighborhood university. With my fellow graduates all bound for universities in Auburn, Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and points beyond, I could see the handwriting on the wall: I was about to be Left Behind.
In a journal entry from that time, I find myself terrified of losing everyone dear to me. This was especially true with regard to my best friend, on whom I had a terrible crush (at the time, I mistook this for True Love). The thought of losing him kept me up nights.
Now, I live in a future I could have barely imagined. Powerful computers are a part of everyday life. Music comes on shiny silver discs. Instead of suffering in a closet, I’m in love with the World’s Most Wonderful Man and living a free and honest life in front of everyone, including the family I long thought the truth would literally kill. (It turns out the “Knowing I’m Gay Will Kill Them!” fantasy is just another version of the “All the World Revolves around Me!” fantasy all teenagers suffer from.)
Back then, as we signed high school year books, we scribbled, “Don’t ever change!” Some of us didn’t: both my ten- and twenty-year class reunions were (mis)managed by folks who, decades later, had not outgrown their high school clique mentality. Mysteriously, they were “unable to find” those of us who failed to qualify for membership in their exclusive twelfth-grade social circle; as a result, none of us heard about either reunion until after the fact.
I but have changed … and mostly, I believe, for the better. Despite the worst fears of my sixteen-year-old self, the future, in the end, is a mighty fine place to be.
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