Tomorrow is my high school reunion. Hard to believe all those years have gone by since high school.
I was asked to pray a blessing for the meal, and so this morning during my run, I thought about the ways in which my life was blessed in my high school experience. A few stood out:
In Grade 11, a bunch of girls tried out for the basketball team. They promised they wouldn’t just cut one girl, and weren’t sure how big the team would be. When the final roster came out, my name wasn’t on it…and I was CRUSHED…particularly since I was the only girl cut. They didn’t realize that Wendy had quit before the end of tryouts so they thought they had cut 2 of us. “Mr. Bill”, one of the coaches, found this out through the grapevine…and asked me back on the team. I played 2 years on that team…and while I wasn’t a star by any means, he and Ernie, the other coach, gave me every chance the other players had. I scored my first points of the year in the final playoff game…and got a fair amount of court time that game. I learnt a lot about grace, second chances, hard work…and had a lot of fun along the way.
Carol…an alumni who coached my teams during her university years. When she came on staff, she let us continue to call her by her first name outside of class, and was only “Ms. D.” in class. She invited me and my best friend over for breakfast once before school…pancakes with Granny Smith apples in them. When I look back, she was one of my first experiences in the transition of relating to adults as peers. That was, and is, meaningful.
Mr. P., the math teacher, bounded into class after a sleepless night with the birth of his child. He was exhausted but high on adrenaline, and I remember we spent the whole class time asking him questions about the birthing experience, about labor, about being a dad. That day I experienced the wonder that parenthood has. I remember him excitedly starting to tell us something, and then haltingly backing up, as he remembered his audience was 17 year old girls and boys, and phrasing his story carefully so that it would be appropriate for our ears.
In first year university, I got my first sociology exam back with an excellent grade…to my surprise, actually, as I still really hadn’t figured out what sociology was. However, the professor started off his feedback on the exam by saying, “When you write an essay, you should write in complete sentences. The first paragraph should have a thesis statement outlining the intent of what you will cover in your essay….” And on he went. I may not have understood the content, but my high school education had given me the ability to know how to write an essay. I value those lessons…even though I didn’t like English, didn’t really get high marks in the subject, and never did get all the way through “War and Peace”.
At my 10th year high school reunion, I remember the quiet satisfaction I felt as I saw the cool jocks who wouldn’t look twice at some of us in high school, go over and talk to the now-swans-who-had-been-ugly-ducklings. The universe, or my universe anyway, realigned itself into a friendlier place, as I saw previously cocky kids morph their brashness into a friendly confidence, and saw wall flower types blossom into interesting people who fascinated us all with their stories of travel and adventure.
High school can be a cruel and ugly place…and that reunion years ago showed me that there was much more in my classmates than was first apparent. I remember standing quietly, watching these conversations unfold. I understood the possibility of redemption, of hope and change in a new way that day.
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