I’ve never understood the whole “High school was some of the best years of my life” thing that seems to be a part of a lot of people’s lives. It might be surprising for those who know me now, but my high school years were much the continuation of the unpleasantness of my grade school years, which had been bad enough that my parents scrimped and saved to send me to the local Catholic high school, which had a — largely undeserved — reputation for academics. Even though I did fine taking some college level chemistry coursework the summer after my freshman year in high school, my parents were reluctant to allow me to go on to college full-time because of a certain lack of maturity on my part. There’s no disputing that was the case, but then again, thirty-odd years later maturity seems still not to have kicked in.
 Yearbook photo from my sophomore year, taken in the room that served as the yearbook office at Marist High School. |
Anyway, despite having worked on the yearbook for three years — including a stint as editor my junior year, when I aroused the ire of my fellow students by making the tradeoff of color photography inside for a black cover — my school loyalty has been pretty negligible (I didn’t work on the yearbook my senior year and I don’t even have one, after spending most of my year as editor having a staff of myself). Years ago, the alumni association tracked me down (I’m not that hard to find) and started sending me the newsletter, which I desultorily read and recycle, but I’ve never been to a reunion or been invited to one. Maybe there’s a reason for that. This was in the latest edition of the newsletter:
