The High School Experience: Then & Now

It’s been a long time since I was a high school student. In fact, it has been been more than three decades now since I roamed the halls of my high school as a student.

Three decades plus. In some ways it seems longer yet in others it seems like just yesterday I was that carefree student finishing my high school years as the greatest decade wrapped up.

One of the reasons it doesn’t seem that long is because my job as a journalist requires me to be at current high school events, primarily sporting ones now. When you constantly see high school students going about their business, you sometimes lose track of what year it is. (I also tend to lose track of what day of the week it is but that’s another matter.)

The students, and especially the student-athletes, I cover each week keep me young at heart. Believe me, I know my body is no longer young. The aches I feel after a day of work or after a couple of hours working in my yard are painful reminders.

It’s interesting to note how things have changed since 1989. When I was a senior in high school, I didn’t have a home computer or a laptop. In fact, we didn’t even have access to the television channels other than the basic ones you received through a now extinct device on the roof until after I was out of high school. This, of course, caused me to miss out on one of the greatest inventions of the 1980s in MTV.

During my high school years, I didn’t know what an e-mail was. I didn’t call my friends on a phone small enough carry around in my pocket. I didn’t use that same small phone to text friends a message about after school activities or what we would do during the weekend.

In 1989, the vehicle I drove had a cassette player in it, not a place for a CD. If a needed to find an address I had to use a printed map. There was no phone to help guide me there.

Back then, no one read a newspaper on a computer screen. People still enjoyed their paper the way it was meant to be enjoyed — by holding it in their hands, turning the pages and going through it section by section. (The sports section was and always will be first for me.)

Candidates for statewide and national office didn’t rely on websites to help get the word out about their campaigns. Door to door campaigning, at least by candidates on the local level, was still a common practice.

During summer breaks when I was in high school, I actually remember getting letters in the mail from some friends who lived out of my free calling area. Can you imagine that happening now? What student today would dare put a letter in an envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it? It would be completely unheard of.

I’m not one who is going to try and convince you that everything was better in 1989 for that is simply not the case. I don’t think I could get by without e-mail or texting today and certainly not my laptop.

Yet, I admit to still longing for the final days of the decade of big hair, Izod shirts, Pacman, Magnum, P.I. episodes and moonwalking. Why? Because that was my time and my decade and it will always hold a special place for me.

Yes, many things are better today, but nothing will take the place of yesteryear, at least not in my mind and in my heart.

Another anniversary: September 11 is a date that remains etched on the minds of most Americans.

Simply say “September 11” and people know what you are referencing. It took a tragic event of horrendous magnitude to have Americans put outside petty differences and truly appreciate being part of the greatest country on the planet.

While many still reflect on 9-11 and what it means, our unity has certainly evaporated. The political process in a free country such as ours should be a great thing. However, politics in the year 2020 have become very divisive and bitter.

It’s a shame because our country is strong enough to have views from all sides and angles.

While the victims of 9-11 should always be our first thoughts of that day from almost two decades ago, perhaps we should all think about how united we were then.

Unfortunately, unless we have another event like that it likely won’t happen. There is no middle ground anymore. Every issue, no matter how seemingly small, has become political. Frankly there are some things which shouldn’t be political.

Almost two decades after this event our country is as divided as it has been since the Civil War. Tragedy usually brings us together but that closeness typically fades in a time.

We don’t have that togetherness now. We just have hateful rhetoric from both sides. What a shame.