Waxing Nostalgic...That Senior Picture

I don't know why I'm waxing nostalgic, exactly. Yesterday, I came across a KANSAS concert ticket stub from 1980. Today, it was a senior class photo. I've blogged about it before, but this time, I saw the picture in a different light.

I can't tell you the exact day the photo was taken--that was several months before I began keeping a daily journal. I do know it was in the spring. The seniors gathered on the front steps--steps no longer there--to have some guy I believe on a tall ladder take pictures of us. 

When ready, they passed out the posters to all of us. We all searched for each other, then for our friends. After I graduated, I stowed the poster somewhere in my mom's house where it stayed for decades. Over the years the poster suffered some water damage. It's too bad, because it's a cool memento from the last year of my public school experience.

It's something millions of students--worldwide--that will not have. Dances, games, tournaments, concerts, and graduation ceremonies have been most likely forever canceled. Many have bemoaned the lack of these experiences for these students. I can understand that. Guaranteed, if the same thing happened to us, we would have been upset and felt slighted, saying what some are saying now, that it's unfair.

But, with the hindsight of experience and age, yes--those things are important and have their place, but we also understand--especially today--that other things can be more important. Hopefully, the pain they now feel will be replaced with something positive. After all, they may be--God willing--the only ones that can tell their children and grandchildren that they were unique by not doing things the rest of us did.

Back in the spring of 1984, I stood (stooped, actually--that's me in the middle...) with hundreds of other kids, excited and nervous of what came next. Many got married and had families, careers, all have had trials, tests, struggles, triumphs, joys, accomplishments, basic lives lived. Of course, some are no longer with us and we mourn their passings. 

Imagine, if we knew then what we know now. 

Would we have looked any different? Probably not.