High School

Recently I met a man who attended the same high school as I did, at the same time although not in the same grade. He is the first person i have met from my alma mater in many decades as i no longer live in the vicinity. At the time the school had four grades, about two thousand students, coming from several different towns- one upper middle class, one middle and one lower middle. I was not a believer in Christ at the time and I don't recall knowing anyone who was. Of the students only about ten were minority- a situation i doubt one could find anywhere in the US today- although our class president for three of four years was black, and very popular. My junior year was one of the most difficult of my entire life. I had become a hippie, which today is considered cool or even romantic but then was despised. We had a number of seniors that year who had been kept back a year for some reason or another, known as the "burlies." They were tough kids who threatened me all year long that they would gang up on me and cut my hair. I became an anomaly of a weight lifting hippie and lived in constant wariness that at any moment they would carry out their threats. At one point the wrestling coach, who was one of the few teachers that I actually liked, was speaking with the principal in the hallway. As he saw me passing by he called out asking if I would join the team. I said, "No." The principal asked, "Don't you have any school spirit?" Again I replied in the negative. Leafing through my high school yearbook today, for the first time in many years, I read through all of the comments. Most were inane, as i am sure mine were in theirs. Several asked me to remember them forever. None of these people have i seen in at least forty years. As I looked through the photos of my fellow seniors I realized that the vast majority i never knew. I was not involved in any after school sport or activity. Mercifully the big zit on the end of my nose that I had the first and subsequent days of my senior year was removed with the rest of my acne in my photo so that I looked much better than i did in real life. As I reflect back on those years of misery I wonder what happened to my fellow students. I recall one couple getting married and having twins not long thereafter. They could be great grandparents by now. Some of the guys probably went to Vietnam. A few probably did not return. Surely most married, had children who had children. A few are probably deceased. One guy who wrote in my yearbook never graduated from high school after crashing his meticulously restored car into a tree after trying to see just how fast it would go. How many are following Christ today? I pray to God Almighty that there are more than just me.