HIGH SCHOOL
GRADUATION BLUES by LINDA LEE GREENE©
High
school was a hodgepodge of confusion for me. Consequently, I had no clear idea
of what to expect in life. For the most part, I took college prep courses because
those were the subjects that interested me and in which I made top grades. As a
stop gap, I took typing and shorthand classes, and I will wager that I was the
worse student in those subjects ever in the history of my school. My low grades
in the business courses notwithstanding, I was an honors student, and in the
long run was better suited for life as a professional person. But most of the fledgling
adults in my socioeconomic circle didn’t have college on their radar screen,
and it was an especially long-shot for females. (I attended college as an adult
student many years later.) We were expected to marry as soon out of high school
as possible, and spend our lives as housewives and mothers. My prospects in
that regard were slim, as well, because the boys I had dated had ideas of their
own that did not include being saddled with a family so young. And who could
blame them?
When I
came across the photograph featured in this piece, taken on May 31, 1961, it
reminded me of how purposeless and frightened I felt then. I had designed, and
my mother had made my dress, which I loved, but in truth, I was a seventeen-year-old
lost soul that evening, posing bravely with my boyfriend Frank Adams before
attending my senior class prom. In only a few days my high school diploma from
Franklin Heights High School in Columbus, Ohio, USA would be handed to me and
the troubled thought that would weigh on my mind would be, “What do I do now?”
Frank and I drifted apart thereafter,
our fates sending us to opposite sides of the nation eventually, life journeys
neither of us could have anticipated. But isn’t that the way of fate? My guess
is that most of us are amazed at the way life turned out for us. What surprises
has life sent your way?
Multi-award
winning author Linda Lee Greene’s books are available worldwide in soft cover
and eBook formats on Amazon and other online booksellers.
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