From the sidelines
In this week's issue there is the first part of a three-part series about the final three weeks of school for Marion High School seniors.
With just 18 days left, time is running out on what has been dubbed over time "the best days of your life."
Whether that is true or not depends on who you ask.
If you ask me, I would say it was a good time, but not the best in my life.
Since graduating high school nine years ago, I attended and graduated from college, bought my first car and house, was married, had two children, and best of all, experienced a KU national championship.
OK, so that is not "best of all," but I love plugging that in when I can.
The point is, life doesn't stop after high school.
But that also doesn't mean it can't be looked back on as a great chapter in life.
These final 18 days will probably go faster than any other 18-day stretch in these seniors' lives.
I still feel to this day each year goes by faster than the one before.
Don't worry teachers, I know they don't really go by faster, but I think you all know what I mean.
The main thing I remember from my high school graduation was sitting in my chair on the gym floor at Johnson County Community College and thinking, "Am I really here right now?"
I wondered if I had accomplished everything I was "supposed" to, or if I was going to feel like going back once I was gone.
It just didn't seem that nearly 18 years had gone by, but the banner said class of '99, and that was me.
That night our whole class participated in a lock-in at a community college with games, door prizes, and indoor swimming.
It was the last time I saw some of my classmates.
The weirdest part for me was the fact I saw these people nearly every day of my high school career, and then, poof, no more.
After sitting through long, never-ending classes, eating lunch, and sometimes spending detention together for four years with my classmates, in two quick speech-filled and beach ball-bouncing hours it was over.
Every graduate seems to stay in close touch with a few classmates, here and there with some more, and have no contact at all with majority of them.
But no matter what happens down the road, or who were friends when they walked down the halls from 2004-08, the seniors at MHS always will be members of the class of '08.
Right now they are busy with sports, classes, girlfriends, boyfriends, or jobs, but when they wake up on the morning of May 19 it just might hit them: their life is just beginning.
