A friend’s daughter has just graduated from high school. I don’t know what she’s doing this summer before heading off to college in the fall, but I wonder if she's feeling the same sense of weird transition I did between high school and the next bit of my life.
Of course my next bit was basic training in the Army. As I recall, I left for basic in mid- to late July so I had almost two months to do not much of anything. I still worked at Burger Chef (apparently the chain was sold off to Hardee's and isn't around anymore), I hung out with my boyfriend, went to the pool and the lake a lot, and had enough time to think maybe I didn’t want to join the Army after all. SEMO still had an oboe scholarship they wanted to give me so I did look into breaking my contract but that got a big thumbs down from the Army. So off I went and I sometimes think how very different my life would have been if I’d gone to college straight out of high school instead. For one thing, I'd have flunked out because I still thought I was quite stupid back then. Anyway . . .
I wonder if others also felt strange in that last summer of mostly no responsibilities, just time to work a little, play a lot, get tan and hang out with friends. I didn’t much like high school, and I was not at all sad to leave Cape Girardeau, but that last summer was pretty cool.
2 comments:
She's doing a lot of doctor and dentist appointments--if we can get the first one re-scheduled so it doesn't knock out all the others. She's volunteering at the local humane society (with the cats) and swimming with me and her friends if it ever gets warm enough. She's going to England with us for ten days, and Toronto for the fourth of July weekend. And yeah, she's feeling in-between.
My summer between HS and college I worked 40 hours/week graveyard shift packing car parts. How I managed most weekends at the lake, many days at the pool, concerts, parties AND worked is still a mystery. Clearly I didn't sleep much. No wonder working nights was so hard.
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