I had not realized that my high school years were unusual until I shared some of my stories with friends. In another blog, I discussed being brought aboard the school newspaper as a fledgling reporter. My first assignment was to interview the junior varsity cheerleaders taking a photographer with me to get photos. This was my JOB! I was interviewing cheerleaders!
From that point on, it only got better. I was an introverted shy kid who had trouble just talking to people. Now my job was to talk to people who were popular! People who had a following at our high school. It was unbelievable.
The following two years (junior and senior years) was the same kind of transformation a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly. Each assignment gave me confidence because it was my job. I was legally asking questions and talking to everyone from the quarterback of the football team to the head cheerleader. It felt natural yet sometimes late at night my little five-year old wondered if it was OK to have this much fun?
In my senior year, I was the editor of the Veritas, our high school newspaper, for the second year on the paper, Our newspaper came out on a monthly basis. The weekend prior to publication I would spend all day Saturday and all day Sunday at the convent with the two advisors for the paper - Sister Valerie and Sister Anne. We would pull together all the articles and photos done by staff and make a paper. We would cut and paste for hours fitting each item onto pages so that by the deadline on Sunday afternoon it was ready to go to the printers.
This is how I also learned to have such good writing skills. One issue I turned in a draft of an article as part of our submission package to the printer. The printer could not read my cursive writing and so he called my house on a Monday morning at 2 AM and asked for me. My father was not pleased; the fallout from the phone call convinced me that from that point on everyone would be able to read my writing - and it would not be cursive. All my writing since that incident has been pristine with almost engineered lettering in my printing.
I thought that we were doing normal things. In my senior year, the principal issued me a permanent 'hall' pass to get myself out of any class for any length of time for newspaper work. In addition, I could get anyone else out of class on my hall pass. It seemed normal until I realized this never happened to anyone - ever! There was a part of me that was very careful in my use of this pass. I must confess however in the spring of my senior year I did leave class, go pick up my girlfriend in her classroom and spend a wonderful Friday afternoon doing 'newspaper' work.
So even in our past when we take a second look we can realize that what seemed like the norm was actually very unusual. We all have these stories and they remind us about how unique our lives are. What a blessing!
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