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Queue the high school band to play “Pomp and Circumstance” and get ready to throw your hat in the air because today Mick and I are talking about high school graduation!
Senior ‘88
by Eric Vardeman
I don’t have some grand story about graduation like I did about prom. I do, however, have little tidbits of information, facts, and perceptions of reality accompanied by images that I was able to dig out of the boxes in my office closet. That’s my mom and dad in the pic with me. Early in the year, January of 1988, we were sitting around the dinner table and my dad asked me if I had given any thought to what colleges I was going to try and get into. Now, several people I knew had already applied and been accepted to the school of their choice but I hadn’t given it a single thought. My grand plan was to work and keep playing music with some of my buddies. That didn’t seem as grand a plan to my father as it did me. That spring break, he loaded me up, took me on a campus tour of a nearby junior college, and basically picked out my field of study: computer science. Me? I was like “ok, whatever.” He knew what he was doing because I’m 55 years old and I’ve spent my entire career in IT. It’s provided very well for my family and I. Thanks, dad.
This is my final report card from my senior year. Zoom in and look at that schedule, it’s ridiculous. I was a teacher’s aide for a coach who taught American History. He either had me grading papers or running errands. Not gonna lie, I got bribed to change more than a few grades. Family Living was supposed to teach me how to cook, clean, sew, balance my checkbook, all that. My mom completed my sewing assignments, Lucy (yes, my prom date) helped me with the cooking assignments and I just got lucky with my checkbook skills. The classroom had a door that led to the parking lot and one of my good friends was the teacher’s aide. She would routinely mark me and a buddy as “present” then he and I would slip out the side door and go to lunch early. I don’t know how the hell I managed to get a “B” in Weightlifting. I honestly don’t even remember being in that class. I do, however, remember being in World History with Mrs. Entwistle (who the entire school referred to as “swamp rat” for some reason) but I didn’t receive a grade. I’m not sure why. Test Prep was supposed to help you get ready for the SAT and ACT but I had already taken them so my friends and I spent most of those classes jerking around. The only REAL classes I had were English Lit (which I loved) and Trigonometry (which I did not). I had both with Belinda (from my prom story) and even cheating off of her couldn’t get me any higher than a “C” in Trig. She even spent time trying to tutor me but, let’s face it, I was distracted by other things.
Ah, senior pictures. I normally didn’t buy my clothes at higher end stores. We simply didn’t have a lot of money at the time. But I wanted to look good for my senior pictures so spent my hard earned money on the shirt I’m wearing on the left. Bought it at The Brass Buckle. It was my absolute favorite and I wore it till it was in tatters. If you look back at the top picture, you’ll see my eight picture portfolio sitting on the mantle. My mom still has that sitting in her home office to this day.
Graduation night. We had to march in, sit and then cross the stage alphabetically. Follow the red circle and you can see what my night consisted of: waiting. Afterwards, I was going to go running around with my buddies, attend a couple of graduation parties, partake in general merriment. My parents told me to be home by midnight. I laughed. I got home at 3am. Nobody said anything and I never got in trouble. Belinda (from my prom story) asked me earlier that day to make sure I found her after graduation was over. I finally tracked her down in a little court yard between buildings where we often “ran into each other” before and between classes. She handed me a picture of us that someone had randomly taken in one of our classes. It was a great picture, we were both smiling.
Then she kissed me. <sigh>
Her parents were divorced and her dad lived out of state. I knew she was going to spend some time with him that summer before school started but we promised to talk again before we both left for school. I literally didn’t speak to her again till our twenty year high school reunion.
As I mentioned a couple of stories back, the band I was in while in high school had a drummer, Kevin, who was a year younger than us. We snuck him into the picture above so the whole band was present. I don’t really know why. I think one of us mentioned it and suddenly we all thought it was the best idea ever. Dorks, every single one of us.
My social media feeds have been full lately of graduates and graduation events. One think that strikes me about the kids I see graduating this year is how connected they are: a dozen social media feeds, emails, text, etc.. After high school, they will still be connected, they'll know what school everyone is attending (if they're at school), they'll know what everyone is doing during the school year. Maybe it was just me and my disinterest at the time but I knew the future plans of about six people at the time of graduation. I had no idea about the rest. When I got to junior college, I discovered half a dozen other people from high school and none of us knew the others were going to be there. We were all like "hey, I didn't know you were going here". Our bass player from high school took a year off after graduation then left for college and NONE of us knew where he went. We had a whole year to find out and we didn't. We literally lost track of him for like ten years. My freshman year, there was one pay phone on my floor in my dorm to be shared by everyone and long distance charges still applied (freshman weren't allowed to have phones in their rooms). My best friend and bandmate from high school, Dave, and I sent letters and cassette tapes to each other on a regular basis via US Mail.
I would have loved to be half as connected then as kids are now. I lost track of so many people after high school and, almost forty years later, still haven’t found some of them. If it wasn’t for the evil overlords at Facebook I probably wouldn’t have found some of the ones I’ve been able to locate.
That summer, even though I was excited about going away to school, I remember thinking how the looming end of summer felt like something was dying. I’ve been seeing this quote quite a bit lately on retro-themed TikTok videos that says “we’re all homesick for a place and time that no longer exists and that we can never revisit”. I think I was already feeling that then.
One Foot in the Future and One Foot in the Past
by Mick Lee
I don’t really have a fun or cool story about my graduation. Hell, I didn’t even want to go to it. I wanted to go fishing that day. But my mom put it to me straight when she said she had worked too hard and too long to help me get through school for her not to get to see my walk across the stage and get my diploma. So I went. And at this age, I’m glad I did. It turned out to be the last time I saw a lot of my classmates that I had been going to school with for the last dozen years.
When I think back on graduation now, it’s not the event itself that comes to mind. It’s the uncertainty. At that point in life I had no clue what I wanted to do with myself. I knew I was going to go to college, but I didn’t even know what I wanted to major in. While several of my classmates had already been accepted into big schools and had the next 10 years of their lives planned out, I hadn’t even applied to our local community college yet.
I never gave much thought to the future back then, and actually, I still don’t today. At that time I knew I was working a steady job making good money, and was going full-time the week after graduation. That was all I was interested in at that point. Going to work, getting a good paycheck, hanging out with friends, and going out on dates with lovely young ladies. That was about as far as I could see.
I was working in management, so pursuing an education in that field would make sense. My dad owned his own business, so I thought maybe I would just take over for him one day. I really had n clue where life was going to take me, but I knew where I had been.
I thought a lot about the fun times my friends and I had during our years in school, and especially in high school. Football games on Friday nights and hanging out at Pizza Hut afterwards. Going on double and triple dates to the movies or bowling. And I thought a lot about the fun times that we were younger too. Things like the book fairs at school and the various field trips we took.
Even back then I was a nostalgic person. Around the time of graduation I was thinking back on all of these times and knowing that they were gone and not coming back.
Graduation for me was like being in the middle of a game of tug of war. The future was trying to pull me forward, but the past was putting up a fight to hold on to me…or me to hold onto it. It can be a scary time to be graduating school not knowing what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.
And had I known that I would rarely ever see most of those people again, I would have probably soaked it all in even more. But life moves on and so did I.
I did eventually go to community college, but I never got a degree. I switched majors after the first semester, and then dropped out after the second semester to be able to work more. And that’s pretty much how life has been ever since. But I don’t regret much about it. I ended up getting my education in cities all over the nation as I traveled for a lot of years, and learned way more about people and life than I ever would have in college. I learned how to talk to people, which is a skill that has made me a lot of money over the years since.
But I do regret not being more invested in my own graduation. It’s one of those moments in time that you can never get back. If I had it to do all over again, I would have made a bigger deal about the day itself, but as for the rest of it…I wouldn’t change a thing.
That’s going to be a wrap for this issue. What about you? Got a memory or story from high school graduation you’d like to tell? Drop us a comment! Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to being back here with you again next week.
