This weekend was my 20th high school reunion. Aside from the fact that I can't believe it's been that long, I have no other emotions about it. I did my thing in high school, had a few really great friends and made the most of a bad time in life. I moved from Louisville to Clearwater at the end of my freshman year and had a tough time adjusting. It wasn't horrible mind you, it's just that I left a school where I knew nearly everyone to attend an even bigger high school where students were often nothing more than a face in the crowd. Before East Lake High opened in 1986, Countryside had over 4,000 students and saw new students starting each and every day. It was just a fact of life that each day at school would bring a new face, each trying to adjust like the one before.
That being said, Countryside was a really good school, offered just about every conceivable subject and had stellar organizations, clubs and sports (save for football). The teachers were good, the building was new and being a very rich school, we had everything we could ever ask for. It was easy to tell the student parking lot from the teacher lot. The students drove Corvettes, BMWs, Mercedes, Porches and other fancy cars. The teachers drove Hondas, Chevies and Toyotas. More than a few kids had their own airplane, most lived in half million dollar houses and vacationed in Aspen and Europe. It was also lilly white with only a handful of minorities sprinkled in. Gender issues aside, I never considered going and glad I didn't.
1 comments:
Almost sounds like a scene from "Pretty in Pink."
My school was consolidated into one from three separate schools, and I don't ever remember anyone being uber rich. We were all pretty much middle to upper class, and everyone seemed to get along with everyone else.
We only had about 350 in our graduating class once combined. Each of the three schools brough in about 100 kids to the graduating class, give or take. We were the first graduating class of the consolidated school, and had a mixture of all ethnicities. Although there weren't a TON of diverse groups, it was a good number for a southwestern Pennsylvanian school.
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