those good old days.

my high school is being razed, replaced by a gorgeous building that will house generations of kids from franklin.

this is what my high school looks like now.  piles of old chairs, rotting wood, bits and pieces of nothingness--piled up to be carted away to the dump.  that building above was the gymnasium--known to us as the field house--and there was a giant panther painted on one of the walls.

it was there that i ran laps during PE and practiced tennis by hitting the balls against the wall and watched basketball games with boys i wished were my boyfriends.  

it had the smell of unproven sex, sweat and desperation.  it smelled as if john hughes had commissioned a fragrance called "high school".  it was glorious.

now it's gone.

i'm not really all that nostalgic about the building itself, but it does feel a bit strange to see it destroyed. when i pulled up to look at it, there were three guys in the parking lot, looking at it as well.  were we all there for the same reason--to pay our last respects?  did they have feelings of sadness or longing?  did they have the same impulse that i did--to jump the locked fence and make off with something tangible to remember it by?

i would've loved to pick through that pile.  that kind of stuff is my jam, anyway, but can you just imagine finding a chair and bringing it home?

if only home wasn't Los Angeles.

i'm thinking about all of those boys and girls that i was in school with--now men and women with prostate exams and mammograms and hair loss and trick knees and all the trappings of adulthood: mortgages, divorces, aging parents, children.

children who will be going to the new high school, never to know the sweet and sourness of that old building.

we've all changed so much, and yet we haven't.  our bodies have--my hands are proof enough, what with their age spots and veins and crinkled-up skin.  but still, these hands love to put my hair behind my ears, just like i did when i was 16.  my legs might have had trouble climbing up the fence--it sure as hell wouldn't have been graceful--and they have more cellulite and spider veins than i care to mention (but i just mentioned)--but they are as long and formidable as when i was a teenage dream.  and my head--the brain that resides in it--oh man, let me just say that i am so glad that my head has grown up.

'cause that girl back there, she didn't know what to do with that brain of hers.  now it seems to fit me  so well.  

except when it doesn't.  well, work in progress and all that.

it's sort of sad to see it gone.  those old hallways.  those front steps where i fell down in front of melanie when she told me about that kiss.  damn, that was fun.

time marching on, just like me in the franklin high school band back in the day.

sigh.