Average Jane Has Moved On

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I learned this week that my old high school may not be a high school much longer.

A handful of my Facebook friends are from high school/junior high/elementary school and I've noticed them joining a group to "save" the school.

Maybe it's because I moved away from the area or maybe it's because I didn't really stay in touch with very many people from that period of my life, but I just can't work up any feelings about the change one way or another.

Times are tough, budgets are tight, and nostalgia rarely has a fighting chance versus cold, hard financial realities. Does it really matter that a particular building may become a middle school after fifty-some years as a high school? I truly don't think so.

I used to nurse a strong nostalgic streak, but 40+ years of life have chased most of those notions away. It's not that I don't care about the past, I just recognize that it's the past and it's over. Everything changes, today is more important than yesterday, and life is a lot less stressful when you aren't struggling fruitlessly to keep everything the same forever.

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4 responses to “Average Jane Has Moved On”

January 22, 2010

(jeff)isageek

my mom went to ruskin. We lived not to far from there until I was ready to go to jr. high and then we moved to grandview. know the area well.

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January 22, 2010

Nick

meh. also a ruskin grad and have no enduring love for the building proper, much less what the surrounding neighborhoods devolved to since the 70s.
of more worry is what becomes of either site when abandoned: it might be nice to raze ruskin and create a park on the site, but the city can’t afford to maintain the current parks and, even if fianancing were found to implement said notion, chances are the drug gangs would keep families out of it…

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January 22, 2010

cagey

Hee. Actually, my middle school used to be the high school. Then? They tore part of it down, built a new middle school. THEN? They turned THAT middle school into a high school and built ANOTHER middle school. Times? They change.
I love history and enjoy learning about the past – one of the reasons why I love antique malls, they are like museums to me.
But, I also like new things. I will always love the feel of cracking open a book, but I do see myself getting a Kindle eventually.

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January 24, 2010

Fate

Reminds me of something I’m seeing now that I’m getting rumblings for a highschool reunion. I’m rather saddened by the fact that most of the groups / cliques / bullshit is still there.
There’s value in history and tradition, but I’d like to think I have more glory days ahead of me than what was an old highschool. Nostalgia more and more seems to mean not growing up and living in the past.

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