More Good Times Ahead

High school graduation ceremonies are approaching us once again and, as is the case each spring, my mind drifts back to a time when I took part in my own event and how much things have changed since that year.

As a member of the Class of 1989 (the best class in history), I was probably among a small group of high school seniors who actually did not want to graduate. Perhaps it was the one area I was actually smart in so many years ago. You see, I knew how good things were and how good I had it at the time.

Despite teenage problems which we all thought were the end of the world at the time, when you are a high school senior (or student for that matter) you really have no worries. It was nothing to worry about on the level of being on your own in the real world anyway.

Around my sophomore year of high school I actually began counting down the days to graduation, not with joy, but with dread. I remember trying to put it in the back of mind and telling myself, “You’re just a sophomore. There’s no need to worry about it yet.”

Even when my junior year of high school began, I convinced myself that since my class still had another year to go, there was still no need for panic.

By the following summer, however, I knew graduation was just on the horizon and would be upon my class in the blink of an eye. Our last summer as a high school student had arrived. Our last football season was approaching. Our last everything would occur as that school year progressed.

By the time Christmas break arrived, I knew the inevitable was approaching. There was no stopping it, no delaying it, no applying for a fifth year of high school eligibility (a classmate and I actually joked about that a good bit.)

The night before we graduated, our small class held a cookout with our parents. After our meal and gathering we went to our school gym for a final walk-through for the following evening’s event. While others were having the time of their life, a classmate and I sat on the stage in our gym and talked about how the “good times were coming to an end.” No doubt others laughed at us for our attitude.

Graduation that year did arrive. The ceremony was held and I made it through. Yet, a year doesn’t go by that I don’t think about it and how that event was the starting point of the next chapter in my life.

Truth be told, childhood memories are often a funny thing. We remember what we want to remember. We make the good times into great ones and make the times we didn’t like disappear or, at the least, fade into the back of our minds.

I’m sure high school seniors who are part of the Class of 2011, at least some of them anyway, are feeling those same butterflies as my classmate and I did all those years ago. (Has it really been 21 years since it happened?)

Speaking from experience, I can tell them that more good times are ahead. I actually enjoyed the first couple years of college as much as high school and in many ways, even more so. For with graduation came a new found freedom of doing more on your own and beginning to carve out your identity in the world.

There are many more milestones to reach once high school is over. Leaving behind what you’ve always known is never easy. However, opening new doors can also be rewarding and offer a new collection of memories which can be just as rewarding, if not more so. Time will prove I’m right to the seniors in the Class of 2011, but it will be something they have to learn for themselves.

The high school door may be closing for some, but there are literally hundreds more to be opened.
Monticello native Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal in Winder. You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.com..