WAYBACK MACHINE

VOLUME #1

by

David L. Wise

Every once-in-a-while, I surf over to the Master LHHS Alumni Website (http://lakehighlands.net/).  I click on the classes of '64-67 (which includes about anyone that I ever knew at LH) and look in on what their classes are doing.  It's kind of like walking down the hall at the old school and peering into the open doors of the other classes to wave at friends.  I can't tell you how many times I got into trouble for doing that. 

Although all the classroom doors are open, each desk is long since vacant, the blackboard clean, the room only eerily occupied by those dust particles that are visible when sunlight shines through the windows.  If I close my eyes, the school instantly fills with familiar faces from a time gone by.  I can even smell that faint smell of cigarette smoke near the teacher's lounge.  In this day of health awareness and political correctness it's hard to believe that teachers actually used to smoke in the school building.  Today, I think they would lock you up and throw away the key if they even suspected that your great-uncle, Leonard, smoked during the Normandy Invasion.

My locker, #306 is still there.  Since I last threw my books into it, it has had a minimum of forty subsequent owners since me.  Then why do I consider it my locker?  Because. . . one's locker is the only vestige of privacy or personality that anyone has in high school.  Once you have one, it is stuffed with secrets and is yours forever.  One of my granddaughters recently told me that her school does not have lockers.  In a misguided attempt to increase security, the school requires that students carry all their books in a backpack.  Personally, I'd rather a student had a weapon in his/her locker (way down the hall) than in a backpack while sitting directly behind me in class.  Although no one ever sat behind me in class.  With a name starting with a "W", I was guaranteed a seat in the back of the room, where I could concentrate on making poor grades and the disruption of others.

Remember those wonderful days when a substitute teacher filled in for your regular teacher?  I loved those days, because I always switched seats with someone else and had them answer "here" for me during roll call.  And if I got too rowdy and got into trouble with the substitute and she sent me to the office. . . I'd go outside and smoke.  After all, no one was looking for David Wise.  They were looking for whomever I switched seats with.  I remember one time when some boys jumped out the classroom windows and left the school.  Today, they probably have it all computerized with student photos to prevent that.

Study hall was one of the greatest social inventions of all time.  Since the only rule imposed by Mrs. Killough was to retain a modicum of quiet, study hall was a great place to perfect your social skills.  James Bond himself would envy Jeannie Wilson's clandestine note-passing ability during study hall.  I spent more energy trying to look like I was studying - than if I had actually studied.

Oh, for the good ol' days. . . More on this later.

David