Australia Blog

Memory Lane

After finding out about a high school reunion by chance, I wandered along on Saturday to check things out. Rather than a gathering of a particular graduating year, it was a 40th anniversary of the school so there were alumni's from the 60's, all the way through to the current crop of students.

It was a good showing, with a few hundered people milling about. I registered myself so I could see if anyone else from my year had showed up. Didn't see anyone, but I was early, so I wandered oaround the grounds, checking out the new structures.

In the new library they had set up a "Memory Lane" with tons of photographs, staff photographs, news articles and 40 years worth of yearbooks. It was fun to be able to dredge up some memories and see some old faces, albeit on glossy paper. I found a Grade 10 yearbook containing a story I'd written for English class and had a good laugh at myself.

Back upstairs in the main hall, there still wasn't anyone I knew, but I did manage to speak to a couple of teachers that I had really respected. Both of them have such a love for teaching and really enjoy hearing what old students are up to and remembered more names than I did from my year and that was 12 years ago!

The school itself is not in the best of positions and has about 2 years to turn things around. From a school of 900 when I was there, it's down to about 250 now. Low student numbers really cement a downward spiral, but it is a good school with good staff so it would be a shame for it to close.

As I was leaving, I picked up the school history book for a look-see and flicked through the pages. Something on page 17 caught my eye. It was talking about the drama club and their first presentation in 1984 was a production called Boots and All.