The Alexander City Outlook

Popularity and reputations

Grammar school was somewhat like a warm blanket where we were known by the teachers. We also established our reputations of behavior, maybe good, maybe bad.

Going from the warm blanket to high school was like being thrown into the lion’s den. We didn’t know the teachers, but more importantly, the teachers didn’t know us. We had new reputations to invent and new personas to project. Most of us knew a few seventh graders (high school went from the seventh to the 12th grades), but we certainly did not feel comfortably at home in this old, sometimes shaky building, with its practically grown students and menacingly new teachers.

There were a few boys who turned out to be bullies, but the majority of the student body was friendly or at least indifferent. High school was really where reputations were made and popularity came to play.

There were football heroes, beauty queens, homecoming royalty, cheerleaders, editors of the Cinder (in everybody’s eye) the school newspaper and so on and so forth. Even today, I can remember all these luminaries.

The main reason school was crowded was because veterans of World War II were beginning to come back to continue their education, which was interrupted by their enlistment in the Services during school. Ex-servicemen were usually no nonsense young men and didn’t bother us or anyone else.

It was almost unbelievable to find ourselves in the upper grade and consequently in the same positions of those we had greatly admired five or six years ago. After this heady experience, we were faced with marriage, work, college, or the armed services.

School seemed to last forever until graduation time, at which time it seemed like a matter of weeks. We all went our chosen ways and more or less lost touch with one another until we came to the 50th anniversary of our graduation. At that time, we all gathered from far and near to have a perfectly wonderful time. I urge anybody to attend his or her high school reunion, as you cannot imagine how delightful the occasion is.

Besides, someone has done a lot of work to put the reunion together therefore deserving at least a show of attendance. My chosen path was college from where I graduated, but just barely. That is why I am doubly proud of my diploma. From college, I was whisked into the U.S. Army, which was the scariest yet the most rewarding experience of my life. More about this later.