Yikes. Fifty Years Since High School Graduation?!

It’s not possible. Half a century has passed since many of us graduated in 1974. My reunion is coming up in the fall. And yet looking back with the eyes of now, I see how we were an interesting, cool generation in four ways…

Our hair – I see pictures of those days and am taken back by the long tresses—on both males and females. I had a huge crush on a boy in my algebra II class who had shoulder length brown hair. To me, Jimmy was beautiful, sexy, and soulful. Unfortunately, I didn’t have naturally straight hair so had to set my locks on huge empty orange juice cans as rollers, to the horror of my parents. I’d sleep on them, but in the morning, take them off and there would be perfect, straight tresses…at least until fourth period when they started curling up again.

Our clothes – The sixties and seventies were the first inklings that girls could dress the way they wanted. We could express ourselves in ways different than our mothers and grandmothers. We wore our miniskirts proudly and unabashedly. My freshman year I wore knee socks sometimes with mine, which took away from the total look, but oh well. For the first time, females were allowed to show off what they had without being labeled ‘bad.’ And we did. We also wore peasant blouses and overalls and embroidered jeans. Boys wore bell bottoms, and some wore love beads and green army jackets, and everything felt cool and hip and rebellious.

Our music – While I like Taylor Swift and would even see her in concert for the sheer spectacle, we had Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and The Who. I still can’t hear Carole King’s “Tapestry” without thinking of freshman study hall and the girl that liked to play “It’s Too Late” on her portable record player. Songs like “War” by Edwin Starr and “Living in the Bottle” by Gil Scot-Heron caused us to focus on larger issues, including those mean, inner-city streets. I remember when “American Pie” by Don McLean came out and everyone started singing in the hallways those opening lines, “Long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music made me smile…”  

Our place in history – We grew up during the Vietnam War. Every night on the news, we’d hear the latest death count from southeast Asia. For many, it gave us a cause, whatever side you fell on, and something big outside of ourselves to think about. It caused many families to talk around the dinner table and ponder what we stood for as a country and our values. When it finally ended, I saw how that fraught, turbulent time had shaped our high school years. Some of my friends became life-long peace activists. Others lost a brother or cousin in the conflict and that changed them forever too.

Fifty years have flown by. Now many of those graceful long-haired girls and guys are grandparents, as evidenced by the Facebook posts.

If you had said to any of us on that last day of high school, “See you at our fiftieth reunion,” we would’ve laughed. We couldn’t imagine being that old and decrepit, that ancient. And yet here we are, maybe not so old and decrepit after all. For most of us, life is still good and beautiful and worth living.

Strangely, I don’t feel much different from that girl who wrapped her hair around empty orange juice cans.

Like many of us, that high school kid is still in there.

 

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