Tag: East Lake High School
East Lake High School Class of 1997 Photo
I believe it was exactly 20 years ago today that I graduated from East Lake High School at a ceremony at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. It’ll be this weekend that a few dozen of the 600+ members of the graduating class get back together for a little shindig. I won’t be participating because I’m waylaid with physical disability to the point I’d just be a fly on the wall, sitting in the corner and feeling awkward.
It’d be like I was back in school!
At any rate, I make this post because I want to make public (in a means beyond a scope of constraint) something a few of my classmates have already seen online by way of me on Facebook , but it’s condensed (because… Facebook): Our stolid class picture.
I’m pretty sure I still have both versions of the class picture, but they are tucked in such a position in my closet it’s hard to get a hold of them. And the scanning / image merge function that I have to use to get the pictures scanned is a pain to do (it was tough with this one — and that process was a few years ago):
Click on the image to get a better view at imgur, or click this link to go to the page. And you can click the image there to get an even more close-up view of the image.
East Lake Class of 1997
OK, so lets start with soemthing short and undetailed: I graduated high school ten years ago back in June.
Yup, that’s right, it’s been ten years since the summer of 1997 — when the Spice Girls were still somehow relevant, when that little probe touched down on Mars and shocked and awed the US and the rest of the world (OK, that was July… I’m just referencing the past here).
Well, next week will be my 10 year high school reunion from what has been announced over and over again to registered alumni on MySpace. Some people are out of this world excited about this. On the other hand, I had a former classmate tell me in person (and I am paraphrasing here) “I don’t want to see those people.”
Me? I’m the latter but at the same time, I’m a bit of the former. I’d love to see or talk to some people that I knew and were friends with again – touch base and what not…. Then I remember how odd High School was for me socially: not the normal variety of High School awkwardness that most go through but try being hearing-impaired to a grand extent on top of it.
This is where I should insert a colorful anecdote or two about social awkwardness without ones hearing — like thinking someone asking me if I worked at Publix was asking me if I supported abortion, or the time someone simply asked if I was going to a homecoming dance and I had no clue what they said and just guessed they wanted paper — but I’d rather not. Besides, both those aforementioned encounters were with people above and below the Class of 1997 and this is supposed to be about those people.
You know, over the years in my online endeavors, I’ve hoped to come across some of my friends or past acquaintances by chance and sometimes less by chance and more deliberately. I’ve hoped to hear from some people through this web site or through some of the alumni directories that I’ve been registered with… But mix in the social ineptitude from my high school days and you don’t have that happening.
That’s why darling, it’s regrettable, that you are so god damned forgettable…
On another note, I had someone else contact me on the night of their ten-year high school reunion…. Someone I hadn’t heard or seen in close to 19 years… An old classmate and friend from my childhood on Long Island (who was taking the same position as I — not attending her reunion). So my cynicism about people not getting in touch with me over the past does get muted just a bit from that. Not just that but it made me feel better knowing I wasn’t, ahem, so “god damned forgettable”.
east Lake’s graduating class of 1997 was somewhere around 700 — give or take — and only 75 are committed to the reunion. Me? I’ll be in Los Angeles and on a jet plane home during the reunion events next weekend – so nix the idea of me and my shadow being anywhere near this.
Of course, I’m not sullying those who are attending or those who wish to attend…. I’m not trying to knock high school reunions in general either. I am trying to point out that sometimes, the link to a past you didn’t enjoy isn’t going to be popular. And me as a link to the past tends to be highly unpopular.
I remember
Commerce Road, Oldsmar Florida December 30th, 1996.
I remember…
A night out ended in tragedy. A night of teen drinking and pot use ended horrifically. A collision between a tanker trailer and a Geo Storm that was owned by my former supervisor when I worked at Albertsons’ supermarket at Boot Ranch. Five in total involved in the crash, four dead, one survivor…
I remember Jonathan Sklar having a locker next to me (or below me) in a PE class during my junior year at East Lake High. I remember Graham Miller and Brian Bass being in my junior year English class where I was the butt of jokes and my hearing disability led to self stupidity. I knew Tom Norman — who would end up being the scapegoat of everyone’s irresponsibility because he was the lone survivor and also the driver — being in my freshman Earth/Science class. I don’t remember specifics about the guys — they weren’t my good friends, and I was a wallflower no matter what I said or did in High School… But I remember them.
Ten years gone, and I remember hearing about the news. I remember seeing the picture of the smashed Storm on the cover of the St. Petersburg Times.
Ten years gone, and I remember them. This was really the end of childhood for some and knocked others back into reality and sanity.
I don’t know who else recalls, I don’t know who else reflects, but I remember Jon Sklar, Brian Bass and Graham Miller. Rest in peace, fellows.
The “Engrish Ranguage” campaign
My older brother Mike’s former Creative Writing teacher is running for president … Weird.
OK, it isn’t a serious campaign (or am I wrong?) but DJ Condon, former Creaive Writing teacher at East Lake High School, is putting forth a campaign for president and Mike was tickled to let me know about it. Not just that — tickled to let me know Mr. Condon replied to one of his notes that he wrote to his former teacher.
Mr. Condon is working in Taipei, Taiwan and that’s what leads me to use the English Language parody as the title of this journal entry… It’s also my brother’s ability to write that pushes me to bring up the English Language in the title…
He puts me to shame… He’s much more creative with the language and much more centralized with his thoughts… I might push myself to get some notoriety (be it through sticking my neck out with web sites, story submissions to magazines or movie screenplays) but if Mike actually made an effort instead of being lackadaisical with accomplishing something, he’d run circles around me.
*Sigh* sibling rivalries…
