Age

It was sad to hear Mrs. McCall passed away earlier this week. It was equally sad to hear Coach Watson is battling cancer. I wish him a speedy and full recovery.

This got me thinking about age. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the staff at the high school seemed so “old” to me. Part of it was because I was so young, and part of it was because I didn’t really give it any honest thought. If I had, I would have realized that several of them weren’t that much older than we were.

But age is a funny thing. Back then, we had almost our whole life in front of us and we were invincible. Well, in our minds we were. Heck, most of us had never even considered the possibility of dying. We were going to be the first person to live forever. Or so it seemed.

And it’s equally funny how we view people now as opposed to back then. Most of us “tolerated” the teachers and staff. We had the two or three that we really liked, or even admired, but for the most part, we didn’t think much of them -- or maybe I should say we didn’t think about them much. There was no vindictiveness in our viewpoint, just a bit of apathy.

Now, as “older” folks ourselves, we can appreciate what they must have thought of us and we can certainly sympathize with their position. I know I can. I respected them as a youngster is supposed to respect an adult - or else my dear, departed Mama would have my hide - but now I respect them for what they did for me and what they had to put up with, at least from me.

They were as much a part of my high school life as my classmates were.