So the elections went ahead. And the elections had some trouble. But in the end the results where good.
The results yielded showed every entity (L.E.A.D., F.U.C.K., Student Focus, Independents) got two seats each. Rob Roy, the leading candidate and virtual face of the Friends, was disqualified at first over an issue regarding campaign expenditures and their receipts. It got a little nasty, but in the end, the Elections Committee brought him back in, probably because he won a seat hands down in the first round (virtually unheard of in student elections), and so many were upset at his disqualification.
It should be an interesting year. You can read more about it here.
Through all the books and essays I've been reading and writing lately, I've noticed that I've started to succumb to nostalgia. Not just any nostalgia. But high school nostalgia.
I went to San Lorenzo Valley High School back in the mid and late 1990s. I was part of the Class of '99. We thought we were so special: the last class to ever have a 19, being the last of the century (or so we believed). Anything really went in high school: cars driving fast in the parking lot, teenagers gossiping about Dawson's Creek, or hearing rumors about the new pool that was going to be completed that year. We talked about what we wanted to do with our lives in this new century. Some wanted to go to college. Some wanted to join the U.S. Army. Some didn't know honestly what to do. Most of us didn't really care about all that long-distance stuff when it came down to it. Sure we had our desires about where to go or what to do, but we wanted to live in the moment, where getting the most signatures in your yearbook was the most important thing on the planet.
My fondest memories of high school was meeting my friends at the time out on the Senior Quad near the central entrance of the campus. We ate pizza and shot the shit together, talking about our girlfriends or how much we thought a teacher was crap. And when all was said and done, a bell would ring and we'd flow back to class as it was instructed. Like clockwork.
One high school shtick that I had which lasted from about 1997 to '99 was wearing Hawaiian shirts all the time. I wasn't really trying to make a statement or anything. I just wanted to be different from the sea of teens wearing Nike, Adidas, J Crew, and Tommy Hilfiger, trying to be unique in my own way. I also spiked my hair up (or at least tried to) and wore some of those bead necklaces that were popular around that time. In the end, I looked liked a young Jimmy Buffet fan that listened to punk, minus that parrot shit on my shoulder.
I didn't do anything too special for school, being neither a valedictorian or a quarterback. Instead, I participated in the Literary Club and wrote for the high school newspaper. I also almost won Best Dressed too, but lost out to a guy who later admitted I should have won. But I got noticed. I appeared a couple of times in the yearbook.
After graduation, my friends and I all drifted apart. We saw each other a little after I started going to college, but two years after graduating, we were different people. I also spotted a few fellow classmates at college here and there, where we'd exchange some words about the old days and phone numbers, but left it at only that. To this day, I'm only in contact with three people from my high school.
It'll be interesting when I'll start to get reunion letters in the mail later in this decade and the next; invitations to go back and relive the last decade of the 20th century with the people you went to school with, called your friends, and dated.
One moment that I'll never forget was my commencement speech spoken by one of the class' most popular students. As we sat on the football bleachers on that hot June day, wearing our robes and graduation hats, we listened to the student speak about how bright of a future we were entering, one where there would be hope in the inner city streets, an economy that was robust again, and how peace was being achieved in the Middle East.
When the speaker said that, a guy sitting next to me, one of our class' only Arab students, turned to me, smiled, and slowly shook his head. Out of all that optimism, none of us had any clue what was going to happen two years later.