Goodbye, high school
Several weeks ago, I unearthed my Washington High School yearbooks and brought them in to work. I was writing a story about the sale of the old Arena scoreboard and intended to personalize it with the scores of the three years WHS went to the State A (as it was then) finals.
Turns out the Arena scoreboard looked the same but had been updated since I was in high school. It wasn’t the same one, so I scrapped that idea.
I didn’t take the yearbooks home immediately, however, because they were heavy and I am lazy.
The yearbooks also smelled like old paper — you know that odor — so I didn’t put them on my desk. Instead I put them atop the recycling wastebasket next to my desk.
Big mistake. I didn’t realize it, but apparently anything on top of the wastebasket means it should be recycled.
I didn’t notice for several days, and when I did I learned the yearbooks were long gone.
I haven’t actually looked through them for years, and I kind of feel sad that I’ve lost them. After all, it’s proof that yes, I actually was 32nd chair in the flute section in band and that I belonged to German Club.
I also feel a bit relieved. I never have to move the yearbooks to another house, nor do I have to decide when my “niephews” put me in a home what to do with the yearbooks. They’re gone-gone-gone.
If I could go back in time, I never would have ordered them. That wasn’t the kind of thing you did when I went to high school, however. I wanted a class ring only because I love jewelry, but since the day after graduation, I’ve never regretted not having one. So much money spent on unimportant stuff.
(Besides, the cover of my senior-year yearbook was incredibly ugly. You go into the WHS memorial room at the Pavilion and look at the shelves of yearbooks, and you’ll know immediately which one it is. The bright blue one with yellow lettering.)
So, mixed feelings about the loss of the yearbooks.
