Horsehead Chess

It seems a little strange, people congratulating me (I have to think for what, but then I remember I'm retiring next month after almost 24 years in education). This pic was taken three years ago in our gifted classroom in the 300 wing. These guys are seniors now getting ready to graduate. They were sophomores here, pretty fresh to the high school. They probably wouldn't do something like this now, too mature. 

That topic ranks high on the items I'll miss about teaching: the kids keep one young. You can't stay around hundreds of immature minds and bodies daily and not have some of that much desired fountain of youth rub off on you.

I remember the summer following my own graduation at Socorro High School, Class of '72. We drove around that summer playing hide and seek in cars, driving through Shirley's Drive In with the windows down and our music blasting, or plowing through the salt cedar in the Bosque, or maybe actually meeting up with a carload of girls and flirting, trying to blow off a little steam before we joined the workforce, went off to college, or took a suggested south Asian vacation courtesy of the government.

We vowed that summer that we would never get old and stodgy like many of the "adults" we dealt with daily. Remember, this was back in the times of: never trust anyone over 30. Of course, we thought it would be an easy vow to keep: doing silly things from time to time to break up life's monotony, but then we hadn't seen life from "this" perspective yet, most of us nearing leaving the workforce, or at least thinking about it, because I doubt we'd sit down to a game of horse head chess at this point in our lives if we got together. And there's probably a wisp of sadness in that.