You Can't Go Back Again

There are few (if any) things that we, as a human collective, agree upon.  In most experiences or circumstances, there are too many variables to get even a group of a dozen people to all say "yes" or "no" if asked the same question.

So the question that is in my head currently is this:  If you could relive your high school experience again, would you do so?

Responses to this question tends to let you know what that person's experience was like.  I know people who couldn't wait to get out of high school, and others who enjoyed their years so much that they look forward to reunions and thumb regularly through their yearbooks while wearing their mascot-laden sweatshirt.  I'm somewhere in the middle - I know where my yearbooks are but haven't glanced at them in years and I actively avoid reunions.  (I'm not one for establishing friendships just because time has gone by and you've forgotten what a tool you were back then because now you've found peace or whatever.  If I was close to you way back then, I'm likely still close with you now.)

I started thinking about this today when I read about a Sundance movie that was released last month about five different stories of children going through various organizational issues in their high school.  One of the individuals highlighted is a student at the school I graduated from more than two decades ago, and as I read about her frustrations, I found myself squarely on the side of ... ... ... the school.

After all, that's My high school.

I loved my high school years.  I had a great group of close friends and extended acquaintances.  I had teachers who really cared and gave the extra effort.  I had extra-curricular activities that helped me express myself as a angst-ridden teen.  I also was part of one of the smallest graduating classes that the school had ever had so it's not an exaggeration to say that we all really did know each other - some of us had gone through our entire 12 years of lower education together.

But I don't want to relive that experience again.

You see, I visited My high school the year after I'd graduated to visit a favorite teacher and quickly realized that, in just less than a year, things really HAD changed.  This wasn't the place I'd left behind at all.  Sure, I still knew most the staff and a lot of the student body, but enough had changed that I saw this wasn't the school I remembered so fondly.  Time continued to go by and the school itself grew and changed (new buildings, new teachers, etc), but each time I drove by, I would remember my years there fondly.  The school I'd graduated from had changed, but the one I'd graduated from that still lived, untouched in my head, had not.  Time has a funny way of doing stuff like that.

Strangely enough, I found myself listening to my hometown radio station (online) today and they were talking about their high school reunions.  One speaker was repelled by the whole idea of reunions and how fake they can be and the other, who had gone to the same school but in a more recent decade, was in active (Facebook) communication with all his friends and teachers and was excited to see them again soon.

I'll bet he was a tool.