The Class of '63

Sara is actually a member of the Class of '65. I'm a member of the Class of '63. Sara's brother found her copy of the '63 yearbook from her high school and got it to her. We enjoyed looking through it so much that I pulled out my own '63 annual and paged through it remembering things that took place almost 50 years ago. I worry that the youth of today are going to miss out on something big by not having yearbooks. I read that more and more schools are not having them made. The current crop of young people are members of the computer age. They don't know a time when there were no computers on each person's desk. They don't understand being able to revisit memories 50 years removed, so they aren't worried about whether or not annuals are available. While it is true that pictures and writings can be saved on a computer, how can we possibly tell what they will look like in 50 years? Is there going to be computer systems available that will still show pictures of the Class of '10? Will there be some way that the remembrances and musings of our best friends from high school are still available to recall? I'm afraid that this won't be the case. As I looked through the two annuals, I thought about how much we seem to have lost already. Sara's yearbook showed a picture of the Future Homemakers Club and another of the Future Farmers Club and yet another of the Future Teachers Club. Since I attended a much more "sophisticated" city high school, we didn't have those particular clubs. We did have have pictures of the Home Economics classes and the Shop classes. In my school, girls were expected to take Home Ec and boys took Shop. I stunk at Shop and would probably have done better taking Home Ec. I do remember making a lamp that was supposed to resemble an old pump. When the handle was pumped, the light switched off and on. It sure didn't look like much, but at least the light worked. In Home Ec, the girls learned to cook and sew. The boys always volunteered to try out the cooking results, but we weren't about to model the aprons that were sewn. Clothes sure seem to have changed. The senior pictures in both annuals had the boys in shirts and ties and the girls in nice dresses with necklaces. I guess that the pictures in the '10 yearbook with be in color so that the low-slung pants of the boys will allow the color of their underwear to show. Many of the students in the '63 yearbooks wore letter sweaters and jackets. This included both boys and girls. I understand that in the '10 class, it is a constant fight to keep students from wearing gang colors. My annual had a whole page dedicated to pictures of Hall Monitors. Hall Monitors, of course, were students assigned to sit in the halls and check passes of students moving about during class periods. Now the hall monitors wear law enforcement uniforms and go armed. It is enough to make an old person want to cry. I walked in fear of my parents, my football coach, and the assistant principal. If I got into trouble in class, something that seemed to happen a lot, the assistant principal would have me doing something we called "detention hall". Once I was released from detention hall, I would rush to football practice only to find that the coach already knew why I was late and that he planned to have me run laps, after practice, until I, hopefully, had learned my lesson. Besides the assistant principal and the coach, I was doubly cursed. I had twin sisters who attended the same school. It was their greatest joy to race me home and report to my mother and father the latest kind of trouble I had been in. Detention hall, extra laps, and then grounding for a couple of weeks. You would think that I would have learned sooner or later, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. Just read the comments that my fellow students and friends made in my annual! In just 3 more short years, the Class of '63 will be able to hold its 50th class reunion. Since my school was pretty small, we will probably be able to hold it in a telephone booth (oh yes, for those of you who aren't old enough to remember '63, a phone booth is quite small, if you can even find one now.) I spent 3 years in high school and, at the most, knew my fellow students for only 17 or 18 years (that's if we grew up in the same neighborhoods.) Just the same, I remember them, love them, and hope to be able to see them at the 50th reunion. I just don't think that the Class of '10 will have the same warm, fuzzy feelings about each other 50 years from now. There are just some things that the computer can't replace.