Be True to WHICH School !?

I know I have babbled on before about how due to my accident and subsequent neck break I was forced to attend the cross town rival high school because it was a school which had been built in ‘modern times’ and was basically flat in design and much better to get round in with a wheelchair. And I was stupid enough and my parents had enough on there plates is getting the kids at home and me through life then to worry about academics in the ‘least restrictive environment’ and the time was not right but if?

I have been dealing with loss this last week, loss I did not even realize I had lost. I have been vicariously attending the 40th anniversary of the high school I should have graduated from. A couple of the folks who are my friends on FaceBook have started posting images from the event. I sort of knew the event was coming. I mean, I intellectually knew and as the days closed before last weekend and I read everyone getting excited about how there were going to meet and greet and renew I began to feel I had been robbed and that a level of disability I had not yet ,until now, experienced made itself know to me. I should have gone to the high school I was born into. I should have raised a stink, crossed my arms locked my wheelchair and held my breath until the Boise school district allowed me to attend Boise High School. Sure there would have to have been some considerations and some ramps installed into most of the buildings—maybe even a couple of classes moved to ground level or first floor class rooms. But, this could have been done but it was not.

All week I have devoured each image posted by Jan Goodmundsen and others as they appeared on their FB walls; not believing what age has done to to these folks while at the same time looking at myself and thinking I would have shocked them indeed. I wondering how I would have acted. I have started almost fixating of how I must have disappeared to them as well as they disappearing to me. I had not gone any where really, just hospital, rehab and home and then to school. I guess even if I had gone to good old Boise High, they still would have visited but that is OK, I still would have seen them everyday and our histories would still have co-mingled and I would have most likely attended each reunion as they rolled round.

So I am a man without a high school. Not belonging to the high school I should have attended and kind of belonging to the school I did graduate from really not belonging to either. I have made a couple of these comments on my FB account and someone wrote back, “ You’ll always be a Boise Brave to us”. That was great. They, the folks who put together these events, have not indicated but some have mentioned a “45” reunion and if they do and if I survive another five years in reasonable health I think I am going to attend, crash the event but see all these folks, who had major impact on me growing up let them try to kick me out non of the fossils would be able to lift this fossil to toss out.