Reflecting...
First, let me start off by explaining that the college campus I attend is connected to a high school building. You can cross over from one building to the next, they share a library, and sometimes college classes are held in high school classrooms. There's other buildings a couple of miles away, but the main office is right next to the high school building.
My classes, THIS time, are in that building. I got out early and as I was tired I decided to walk myself up by walking through the high school again. Now, I attended this high school six years ago, even though I graduated five years ago.
That said...
There is something surreal about walking through a high school you once attended.
For me it's been six years, but I remember certain details about it. I remember the bathroom where I hid when I didn't want to go to class since I didn't do my chemistry report. (I failed the class since I didn't do the homework, either.) I remember the choir hall I walked down - the auditorium where I sat, sang, and played music.
There are plaques on the wall - turning plaques that serve as photo albums, dating back to the 1800's, with every graduating student's picture in it. When I look through the years before and after I graduated, I see faces and names that are distant, but that I also remember.
I look out the front doors... the same doors I stood in front of ten years ago when I was thirteen. I stared out those doors and waited for my Mom or Dad to pick me up. On snowy days, my breath would fog up the glass. The flag pole is still there, and I used to sit in front of it on warm, sunny days.
I remember things I worried about. I was envious of how much attention other people got, I was jealous of the popular kids and hated the popular kids who were mean to me (although I never had the courage or quick wit to defend myself,) and I purposefully avoided thinking about all the homework I had. I remember the main arch leading toward the rest of the classrooms and connecting the lunch room, and how many times I passed it... how one time, I thought very much of the boy I was dating at the time - I thought he was wonderful and I missed him. (If you're wondering, I got dumped.)
I worried about things that were never as important as they seemed at the time, and was pretty clueless about the world that went beyond mine - the real world, where people did stuff and things, things like paying bills, and buying houses, and I was supposed to be preparing to BE in this world, and yet ... I wasn't. I was living in THAT world, MY world.
And I remember. Oh, do I remember. Passing notes, skipping class, buying my lunch, having to squirm through the cattle-like crowd of students...
But it was all so very long ago. And as I arrived today, there were no parking spots in the college parking lot, so I parked in the high school. I walked in and saw students... dance squad teams dancing, practice getting out. Students talking on their cell phones.
And here at this community college, a good portion of our college students are construction workers, single mothers, the working class and the working poor. So I have to wonder if those high school kids are going through what I went through when I was their age: looking at the college students as if they were from another planet... and they are, WE are, because we come from the REAL world, and do stuff and things...
And as I walked out from those doors into the night, I turned around to look again institution I was raised at. Just as we are from another planet, the school is another planet ... and I was reminded of that as I saw the big, half-dollar sized, eggshell colored moon hanging in the twilight sky.