High School Graduation 1981

WOW!!! Look how young I was... well 18.. duh! High School Graduation! I think it was May 23rd (or there abouts..) we didn't go to school into June like my kids do. We were out before Memorial Day, and seniors, well they got to graduate a week before that! This is a picture of me when I was still taller than my little brother, Drex. He would overtake me that summer probably... thinking about that, he would have been 12 1/2??? Hey, Drex! Hannah is 12 1/2 and she TOWERS over me!!! You were a shrimp!

Anyhoo, back to the graduation. I had chosen Michael to be my "walking partner" in the ceremony... he came to the ceremony SMASHED! I had to hold all 6ft. 2 inches of him up the entire way DOWN the grandstands and back up after the ceremony... I was NOT pleased. He thought it was pretty darn funny. Ahh... but I loved him... not like romantically, but he was one of my best friends, so I didn't pitch too much of a fit about it.

I also remember that later that day, I went to the Endicott's house to swim and that was maybe the first time that most of my friends had seen me without platform shoes... they didn't realize how short I really was until then. I even wore speca's (Nat, how do you spell those shoes?) with shorts in the summer!

Later in the evening, we went to the Senior Party at TVCC... Monte Carlo night... that was a blast! I had some of the best friends a kid could have. Kim, Lisa, Chris, Steph, Jay, Mike, Brad... we had some great times. I hope that as my kids get into the high school age (only a year and a half away for Hannah!) that they have friends to hang with that are good kids who don't get into the party scene like I had (well, except for Mike...)



February 26, 2007 | Permalink


Comments
I am SO enjoying these pictures! Have mom and dad taken a look at these yet? I figured mom would have some pretty funny comebacks for all the confessing you're doing here!

I guess I didn't come home for your graduation? I know I was there for Drexell's. I must not have been able to get away for some reason. I think I was in Salem by then. Wonder what was up?

The shoes are "Sibicas" and they still make them - looking much like they did in the 70s and early 80s! Other platforms we wore were Cherokees (they were a gum wedge that was super comfortable!). I also had some bright blue suede clogs with a cork wedge and a pair of cool wedge sandals that had a hole cut out through the middle of the heel. Wish I'd kept all those shoes now. I see a lot of shoes in the store that look like them now.

Looks like you also have the requisite "wings" on your hair in this picture. I remember getting my long hair cut for the first time when I was 15. I got it cut at the salon that was in Keith O'Brien's when it was at the mall. Do you remember that? Anyway, I had very prominent "wings" on each side of my head and as I sat in class (can't remember which) Craig Yunt (who I had a big crush on - he had a big red AFRO!) would stick his fingers through the middle of them and go "choo choo!" like a train. Drove me nuts.

This is fun - keep it up! - Nat

Posted by: Nat - Your graduation | February 27, 2007 at 12:21 PM

It was awful big of me to dress up for the occasion of this photo. I will say that I'm very proud of that shirt. Today, my favorite T-shirt hanging in my closet is a Royals T-shirt. In 1981, my other favorite T-shirt was an bright orange Oregon State shirt. But then, childish attitudes are to be outgrown, aren't they?

As for my height, I will not say that I was near as tall as Hannah at this age, but chances are that you are wearing those huge, white platform shoes at this very moment and I am, from the looks of it, barefoot and not long awake. Not to mention, I'm standing in a hole. I retain, somewhere deep in my repressed memory, a three dimenssional map of that lawn and every divot, crater, worm hole and tree root therein. If I visit this painful spot in my pshyche, I seem to recall a large deprssion in the area which I am standing, approximately eight feet southwest of the western most tree of the pair of evergreens in that corner of the lawn. My wife often asks me where my aversion to yard work comes from. After blacking out for a moment, I have a vision of pushing a Briggs and Straton motor mounted on a rusty cage of what used to be a Craftsman mower deck through three inches of eastern Oregon dust, the same dust mind you that choked the wagon riding pioneers one hundred years before, trying to reach a three inch patch of green grass that insists on sprouting itself immediately beside a Yucca plant that has no earthly reason for being rooted in this inhospitable dust, and shearing off half of the pulpy green yucca leaves while the ancient motor chokes and gasps its last, and I still have most of the yard to finish.

Ah, memories. - Drex

Posted by: Drex | February 28, 2007 at 09:59 AM