MY SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL...AND THE OPPORTUNITIES LOST.

My son started his senior year of high school today...Holy Cow! Reflective, I took the time to look through my high school senior yearbook tonight....I looked through ALL the pages...my high school years were filled with nothing but joy and happiness and fun....they were an A plus (for me)....but looking through the pages of my yearbook brought some profound sadness and regret.

.....regret mostly at seeing all the people who I had never taken the time to meet...or to help make feel more important...or noticed. I was lucky, through no brilliance of my own...to be fairly popular...my parents had given me a privileged life full of opportunity....more opportunity than any of my friends had....and the question is...what did I do with that opportunity....??

I looked at some of the less attractive girls and unpopular guys who I never took the time to connect with....It was their senior year too....it was just as important to them as mine was to me...I thought I was a thoughtful person but I wasn’t really very thoughtful....mostly I was thinking about myself..and my circle of friends...the cool people..the jocks...etc...I was nice...didn’t do anything bad or shameful...but what a grand opportunity lost....!!!

“life is about the opportunities, even the ones we miss” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

there were, no doubt, kids who didn’t have a lot of friends..who didn’t have anything to do on a friday night when I was at the games or at the parties....there were a lot of lonely kids out there...girls who never had a guy approach them for anything...guys who ate lunch alone....imagining that my own son might have been one of those lonely kids is enough to make me weep right on the spot....

these were my comrades!...my “brothers and sisters” during the “Wonder Years”. They hold a special place in my heart...we went through those awkward years together.....yet, why was I so blind?

I challenged my son to set an example for everyone in his school to look up to....to be someone who everyone sees as their friend...and someone who cares....

I am reminded of the scene from Schindler’s List...and though I am obviously no Schindler...it still could have been said of me...”I could have done more”. I was thinking WAY too small...my footprint was WAY too small.....

I just wasn’t thinking.....not of the big picture..not enough, anyways....

Recording star Helen Reddy was asked how she wanted to be remembered...she said, “I don’t care if I am remembered at all..only that any good that I have done lives on”.

Looking back...I didn’t leave enough “good” behind in those precious high school years....

(it) could be ”living on” right now in the subconscious of others...but I was too wrapped up in my own life....

The Senior year that had begun so long ago ended...and another one has taken it’s place....will Boo Radley come out?

“Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife...... and our lives.

Atticus said you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

The summer that had begun so long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place, and a fall, and Boo Radley had come out. I was to think of these days many times, of Jem, and Dill and Boo Radley and Tom Robinson ......and Atticus.

He would be in Jem’s room all night .....and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”

- The closing scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird