High School Never Ends

Her CD Changer's Filled with Singers Who Are Mad at Their Dads

Even with High School (and college) becoming smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror of memory, the end of summer still makes you sad.

The back-to-school ads mock you, even if you don't need notebooks or pens.

Summer vacation is over. Even when you have no summer vacation anymore.

When I was a kid, they said everything will change when you get to college.

Well... yes and no.

"You should stop listening to that music," she said, the first week of freshman year.

And you want to ask why, but she's beautiful (and she's talking to you for reasons you don't understand), so instead you just nod.

"It's high school music. You have a chance to start over. Make yourself into something different. Someone cooler."

Because that's what she did.


So you try for a little while. You hide the old albums. You try to go along with whatever's new and trendy.

You hope she notices.

But she won't. And after a few weeks, you notice that you never see her anymore. She's always off somewhere with her new friends. Doing something cool.

Because she's still her. And you're still you.

You wouldn't have liked her in High School. You shouldn't like her in college.

If you think about it, that would stop you.

But it won't. Because you won't.

And that's the real circle of life.


Still, to paraphrase George Santayana (who, I'd like to claim, is Carlos Santana's real father, "those who do not learn from High School are doomed to repeat it all through the rest of their life."