High School Daze

 

I’ve been visiting my high school years via memory lane this month, due to two recent and random events.

1. I went to a DIY framing shop to frame some posters a few weeks ago—one of which I had been holding onto for 20 years. I was a member of my high school chorus, and we went on a singing tour right after I graduated. It was a great experience. We had all fundraised for years, parking cars in parking lots and collecting cans and bottles from our neighbors. As we traveled around Austria and the Czech Republic, we sang in churches, we sang in public squares…we sang everywhere. We sang in a festival in Cesky Krumlov, and I brought a poster home with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Days after I framed said poster, a Facebook friend posted a photo taken during the trip. Can we say spooky? I hadn’t thought about or talked about this trip in years. Maybe a decade? Who knows.

2. Around the same time that I was framing the poster, I received an e-newsletter from the Humanist Community at Harvard. Last year, the organization gave its annual award to comedian/actor Eddie Izzard, whom I love. I attended the event, having never heard of humanism. I was just there for Eddie. During the program, I learned a bit about what humanism is and was intrigued. I signed up for the email newsletter as I left the event.

I receive its e-newsletters once in a while. I read them and think that I should attend an event. But I hadn’t gotten around to it. Until…

So the e-newsletter that appeared in my inbox a few weeks ago listed a few speakers that would be speaking at upcoming Sunday afternoon programs. I skimmed the content and came to an abrupt stop at the name “Sunny Jain.” I went to high school with a Sunny Jain, I thought. I read on: he is a leader of a world fusion band. Sunny was a great drummer in high school, I thought.

I headed to Google and searched for the band’s name, Red Baraat. Looked at the band’s photo and said to myself, yep, that was the Sunny I went to high school with. I attended his talk last weekend and spoke with him afterward. It was almost impossible to believe that I hadn’t seen him in 20 YEARS. He looked the same and he was just as friendly and easygoing as I remembered him to be.

These events have made me feel (a) much older than I usually feel and (b) grateful that I had an awesome high school experience. I’m sure I’m forgetting poignant episodes of teenage angst, but 20 years on, I remember those years fondly. I had many great friends, classmates, and teachers; I loved being a member of the high school chorus and rocking the props department for the school’s theater productions with my best bud, Dais. I got a job at Wegmans so I could afford to go to Italy with the Latin club, and went on the aforementioned trip with the chorus—which led to a lifelong love-bordering-on-obsession affair with travel.

I wouldn’t call myself a wildly lucky person, but I do feel lucky to have attended R-H. Do you have fond memories of high school?