Earlier in the week, I put out a post entitled Bits & Pieces (An Inspired By Song! Series), announcing this 4-part series.  Each installment was inspired by Billy Joel's, "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," and will be titled as such.  This is part 1 of the series.....So Many Faces In And Out Of My Life.

Do you remember what it was like to be a kid in school?  Did you find comfort in seeing the same people over and over again?  Did you ever think about the fact that most of the people that were there for your formative years would not be there for your adult years?  This might be a sobering thought, but it's also true for most of us.  The fact of the matter is that most of the faces that we saw everyday growing up are likely no more than a fading memory for us as adults.

By the time that high school ended, many people went off to college, while others went right into the work force or the military.  In either case, this was the first real experience with people coming in and out of our lives on a regular basis.  After all, even if we didn't have classes with everyone in high school, there just seemed to be a connection to everyone, at least that is the way that it was for me. 

In a graduating class of over 350 students, it certainly wasn't possible to be friends with every one in the class.  There's not enough time to get to know that many people on a friendship level, and yet, there wasn't a face in my high school yearbook that I couldn't put a name to at the time of graduation. 

This would all change on graduation day.  Once we retrieved the graduation caps that we all threw in the air, and drove off with our families to celebrate this milestone event, our lives would be changed forever. 

The sad part is that most of us focused so much on the end of an era and the excitement of a new beginning, that we really never stopped to think about the fact that we had just seen many people for possibly the last time in our lives.  Maybe if we had this insight, we would have done something differently.  Maybe not.  Maybe the reality of that the whole concept is too much for the 17 or 18 year-old mind to comprehend.

I still remember what it was like at the end of my high school days.  Most of us had a good case of "senioritis."  As the year wound down, and we had all long since decided upon what we would do after high school, there wasn't a great deal of incentive to put our collective noses to the grindstone to squeeze out the best possible grades that we could.

For those of us that were going to college, our fate had already been sealed.  As long as you didn't fail any classes that would prevent you from graduating, the college was not going to rescind its acceptance.  Human nature has us programmed to work hard to achieve certain results.  If the results were going to be the same regardless of the effort that was being put in, what incentive was there to do more than the minimum?

Now, this attitude likely changed for most people as we entered into adulthood, but remember, we are talking about teenagers that were mostly concerned with their social lives and their future by this point.  Sure, there were those that just had it inside them to keep their nose to the grindstone, but the majority of us saw this as an opportunity to enjoy ourselves before the next step in the journey that we call life...and enjoy we did!

It was understandable that people tended to take a break of sorts, if given the opportunity.  It would only be a matter of months before each of us would have to work harder than we ever worked before.  If the chosen path was college, then the workload was going to be far greater than high school ever was.  If the chosen path was to join the military, it goes without saying that life would be harder than it ever was.  If the chosen path was the work force, the path would also be harder, as this was no longer the part-time job to be used to earn money for gas and socializing.  This was the real thing.  We didn't know it at the time, but what we were collectively experiencing was the end of youthful innocence. 

I can still remember the last day of high school as if it were yesterday.  It was one of those moments in life that are often referred to as "tent pole moments" (moments that you'll never forget). The night before the last day of high school, a group of us got together to make up shirts with our nicknames on it, and a group name that we never went by, but someone thought that it would be cool to name the group. 

Each person used a plain white t-shirt and colored markers to create a sort of uniform that we all wore on the last day of school.  It sounds kind of corny in retrospect, but at the time, it was a lot of fun.  Each shirt was personalized to make it our own, but there was a sense of unity at the same time.

We made a bigger statement beyond the shirts.  My friend had a car that he was about to get rid of anyway, so we painted our newly formed logo on the car along with other graffiti.  Like clowns in the circus, we piled into the "Toasted Nutz Mobile" (the group name that we coined for the final day of school).  It was only a couple of blocks to the school, but it was still not a comfortable ride.

Looking back on that day still makes me nostalgic.  It truly was one of the greatest days of my life.  It was a day of pure, unadulterated fun.  I can still remember hanging out in the parking lot all day, with the music blasting from the open hatchbacks of cars.  It was a party that started before eight in the morning, and didn't end until four o'clock in the afternoon. 

It took 13 years of schooling to complete the first step of life's journey, and it was all coming to a screaching halt.  We would see each other one more time as a class during graduation, but for all intents and purposes, the last day of school was the last day that we all spent together before going our separate ways.  I wish that I had the foresight to realize just how monumental an occasion that this was.  Maybe I would have had a greater appreciation for what the day represented as it was happening.

As the day came to an end, I got into my red, 1977 Chevy Camaro and drove out of the school parking lot for the last time.  The cassette was all cued up and ready for the final drive home.  Anyone within earshot could hear Alice Cooper's "School's Out" blasting out of the open windows of my car....

School's out for the summer....

School's out forever....

This completes part 1 of this four part series - "So many faces in and out of my life." 

"Some Will Last, Some Will Just Be Now And Then" is up next.