I graduated high school 37 years ago. Put another way, it is 42 years since I first stepped through the doors of my high school.
For perspective, most (all?) of my oldest boy’s teachers are in their 30s, i.e. I was attending the school where they teach before they were born.
So it was weird going back there.
Why did I go back?
Yesterday afternoon I got a text from kid 1, telling me that it was parent-teacher night. Fortunately, it’s not a problem for me to reschedule and make it to things like that. Did I mention that kid 1 is going to the same high school I did?
It was jarring, since I spent 5 of my formative years there. It’s 170 years old so simultaneously quite familiar, and very different. The cafeteria is now the library. The library is now student counselling. Student counselling is now, I don’t know, something different.
Yet, when we went to meet his history teacher, it was in my grade 12 home room, and some of the posters on the wall were the same as 40 years ago.
I recently wrote on the topic of nature vs nurture, and meeting his high school teachers was jarring, because the kid they were describing the me of 40 years ago.
I have spent the entirety of my fathering year
