~Reminiscing~

That's me.  In 1971.  My senior picture...40 years ago.  Mercy!!  This weekend, the class that I would have graduated with, is having a reunion.  I had to move to another large city in the middle of my junior year and graduated from there.  Something about going back and looking for old friends that I grew up with and new friends that I found during my high school years, friends whom I lost contact with, friends whom I haven't seen or heard from in those 40 years and wondering which friends are no longer with us....it all draws me back.  I look forward to seeing them again

I met my classmates when I moved into the school district of William H. Harrison Elementary in the third grade in the large town of Oklahoma City.  Talk about classroom sizes...37 students in my class!!  For the life of me, I can't remember if there was another third grade class or not.  I'm sure there were, as I have it in my mind that there were two classes for each grade, K-6

My fourth-grade class consisted of another large class of students.  I remember being in an annex building that consisted of four classrooms.  During this year, our room faced out towards the basketball court not far from the entrance into the main building.  It was the only time I was in an annex room.

Each year it was always the same.  We pretty much knew who to expect in our two classes with an occasional surprise of someone having moved away or a new student moving in.  It was during my fifth grade year that President Kennedy was assassinated.  It was announced to us during class.  Even as a child, I remember feeling that this was definitely a sad time for our country.

In the sixth grade, our little family became closer, making and breaking friendships, going through childhood crushes and growing up.  This would be the last year that we would all be together in the same building.  Our seventh grade year would be spent in the extremely large high school with several thousand students where some friendships remained, some broken and some new ones were made.

This is me in my junior year when we moved to the big city of Tulsa. This is how my friends remembered me when I moved away. I remember I was the only junior who had a senior ring...in OKC, we were allowed to have them as juniors. :)   A lot of students thought that was pretty cool.  Being a new student in a large school wasn't easy.  I didn't have the ties with the students there and it just didn't feel the same.  But I made some friends...why wouldn't I in a school of several thousand??  And, I managed to enjoy my time there and made it through graduation.

So, here I am again as a senior.  Thankfully, I didn't wear the real beehive hairstyles that were popular during my school years!!  But they are coming back in a way, aren't they?  Maybe I should start wearing my hair like this again.  Had to sit there and park for a bit about the hair...hehe.

My class here in Tulsa had 429 students who graduated...not quite as large as the graduating class of students at John Marshall High School..  But my OKC school was always home to me.  My heart will always bring me back to where I grew up with my childhood friends   I just found out yesterday that my grade school closed its doors.  The high school that felt so large and intimidating when I first entered its doors is no longer open.  A very bittersweet thought knowing that we can never go back, walk down the halls and say "you remember when....?"  Sometimes, I have dreams about being in certain classrooms or down certain halls in that high school...strange, huh?  But there's something even stronger about the ties that we had with our childhood friends.  Was it because we were growing up together, still in the stages of innocence, in our cozy little school building where everything was the same year after year?  Maybe so.  I look forward to the activities of this weekend hoping that I recognize the faces of the people I see, sharing pictures, sharing memories, renewing friendships.  And then there's the thought...will they remember me? I plan to take lots of pictures and, I'm sure I'll have a story or two to share with you!


Have a great weekend ~