This Time of Year

As those close to me already know, one of my jobs is as a substitute teacher. Over the last week or so I have been going to high schools here in San Bernardino. I am trying very hard to remember what the last week of my senior year was like but for the life of me I can't. I might have had a substitute as well; it's not out of the realm of possibility as teachers with sick days built up have the use them or lose them attitude. I don't know why I can't recall my last week in high school, maybe because there was nothing important- I mean it was all busy work and movies. I remember my graduation and grad night but not 3rd period the Tuesday before. So I guess that's what I am now, a blip or a disgarded memory to the class of 2010. It doesn't bother me that much, I just find it funny.

As I have been relegated to mostly babysitting the last week, I have been observing as well. Grades 9-11 are, for the most part, disrespectful and annoying. But seniors are different. One boy talked to me today because he saw that my bag has US Army on it. He too is joining the army and going to basic training in the fall. He wouldn't stop asking me questions. I suspect most seniors have questions but might not have anyone to ask.

I can't speak for everyone, but my last week of high school, there was no malaise, I knew I was moving on. Heck I graduated on Thursday, went to grad night, slept in Friday, went to a friend's graduation party on Saturday and on Sunday my recruiter picked me up and took me a hotel near LAX. By Monday morning, a mere4 days after I graduated I was on an airplane to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. So that last week I guess I was kind of sad. There's a realization that these seniors have (and I suppose every senior has) that the life you have become accustomed to is no more. From age 0 to 17 or 18, you have lived with the expectation that you will wake up Monday thru Friday and go sit in classes and see friends and do homework, etc. That all changes. When the reins are taken off, so to speak, when your decisions are now truly yours, life feels different.

Back in 2001, when I graduated, there was a song that was being played a lot on the radio, it was called Graduation Song (very original I know) that made a lot of girls cry as they hugged each other and signed one another's yearbooks. (Don't get me wrong about that song though, as much as I have a nostalgic fondness for it, it is a crap pop song with God awful lyrics likes "Will little brainy Bobby be the stockbroker man?/Can Heather find a job that won't interfere with her tan?") My point is simply that things are emotional. I guess this is the first time that I have looked from the other side at kids going through what I went through. It's a bittersweet time. A time that, even though I don't remember the events of the days, I remember being sad that things were changing, frightened by not knowing what was ahead, and excited.