Class of ’72: What would I say to the 18-year-old me?

By Mary Kay Roth

Dark, soulful almost brooding eyes.  That’s what strikes me most when I gaze upon this photograph of the girl I once was.  As a senior in high school, she was a gentle spirit, shy, geeky.

But studying this image, snapped some 50 years ago, there is so much I cannot remember.  What was she feeling, thinking?  What would I tell her today?

The photograph came back into my life, recently, wearing it as a name tag for the Lincoln Southeast High School 50th reunion.

And though I know we approach reunions with some amount of trepidation, strangely, age is a great equalizer. Nobody has acne at the half-century high school milestone, but all of us sport wrinkles. Politics loom, but an unspoken truce seems to provide temporary respite from election debate. We seem less preoccupied with clothes and career paths, more mellow showing off photos of grandchildren and talking hip replacements.  

No, I don’t want to hop “Back to the Future” to revisit the class of ’72, ala Marty McFly.  But even though reunion weekend has now passed, for some reason I have left my high school name tag on the kitchen table and look upon that yearbook photograph daily. 

I remember a young woman who was quiet, pensive, nerdy, bookish.  Editor of the creative writing magazine.  Not popular.  Not  bullied.  

Yet as I look at Mary at 18, I wonder about all the things she didn’t know: What would the 68-year-old Mary tell her now?

     * Perhaps the very most important advice of all:  For gosh sakes, never sell that precious 1969 Mustang. 

     * And ignore the mean girls.

     * I know it sounds crazy, but those new-fangled things called computers – they are worth learning something about.

     * One pimple – even on prom night – is not a true catastrophe.  

     * Be nice to the students everyone teases.  At lunch, try not to worry about sitting with the popular kids – look for the kids who are sitting alone.

     * And being alone is not a bad thing. 

     * You are merely a late bloomer.  You will get boobs.  Eventually.

     * And someday you will no longer iron your hair, nor coil it around enormous orange juice cans overnight, dreaming of tresses as arrow-straight as Peggy Lipton (from the Mod Squad). Someday, believe it or not, you will love your curly, unruly hair.

     * No, “he” is not the love of your life.

     * But your dad is another story.  Remember how he danced the polka with you at the father-daughter high school dance, even though he had no clue how to dance the polka?  Give that sweet man – more hugs. (For that matter, give your mom more hugs, and your grandparents.)

      * Pay more attention in your home economics class.

      * You are smarter than you think.  At the same time, please don’t measure your worth in grade averages and SAT scores.  You are so much more than a number.

      * Yeah, it sucks that you work in high school and others don’t.  But someday you will not only have a deeper understanding of those who wait tables and take fast food orders – you will tell glorious tales of the strange adventures of a long-distance telephone operator (a job you didn’t realize was on the endangered species list).

      * Kids who are often labeled as “losers” – the ones who know welding, mechanics, woodworking – they will be golden someday. 

      * Quiet people are not inferior.

      * Stop apologizing when you spend Friday night with a book.  Reading will be your friend forever.

      * Besides, nothing good happens after midnight when you are a teenager.

      * Listen to your wisest of teachers. Ignore the ones who claim, as a woman, your career choices are limited.

      * Take nothing for granted.  Just a few months after high school graduation, the U.S. Supreme Court will confer your right to have an abortion.  Fifty years later, that same court will take it away.

      * I know you have a soft voice.  Speak up anyway. 

      * Your heart is much more resilient than you think.  

      * You will survive high school.  OK, so you’re not a cheerleader, a student athlete, have the starring role in the high school musical, and you agonize over not fitting in.  Someday you will find your fit. Trust me on that.

***********

On Saturday eve at the close of reunion festivities, my friend Pam and I were packing up remains of the “Memorial Table”– photographs of fellow students who had passed away – when a favorite high school pal wandered up to talk.  Quietly, she contemplated those pictures of students we had lost.  Quietly, she told us she had stage 4 cancer – in her liver, pancreas, lungs.

I’m not sure I want to tell the young Mary about that moment, nor about any of the students we have lost over these past decades.  I’m not sure an 18-year-old can grasp that sort of raw fragility.  I’m not sure this 68-year-old can.

Instead, I think I would tell young Mary that, yes, she will have sorrow in her life.  But she will have glorious moments of joy, magic, adventure.  I would tell her to live with abandon, love well, take risks, embrace the mystery. 

I would tell her that she is enough.  She will be ok.  

Even if she does sell that Mustang.