Class of '21




I've hit that stage in my life.

Yesterday, as I was pulling into to the supermarket parking lot  to pick up some toilet paper (now back in supply!), a pickup truck passed by me, the words Class of '21, in giant lettering,  scrawled across its back windshield. 

Class of '21...wow, I'm getting old. I'm pretty sure my high school yearbooks are proudly displayed in somebody's vintage book collection; the '79 Chrysler LeBaron I once drove is sporting antique license plates (if it exists at all); and my master recording of Dark Side of the Moon could exact a tidy sum from some online vinyl collector.  But perhaps the greatest attestation of my age and place in modern history is not some dusty collectable or embellished memory- it is the fact that I have a daughter who is Class of 2021.

I remember another member of the "Class of '21". When I was a college student in the eighties, he served as registrar and my unofficial premed advisor.  I thought he was ancient, because he was. He was an old  biology professor emeritus who remained around campus after retirement from his (our) Alma Mater. As kyphotic and wrinkled as he was, his mind remained sharp and he provided me invaluable off-the-cuff advice which helped me to ultimately gain admission into medical school.

His name was Cyrus Flook, and he was a member of the Class of '21......1921!...nineteen twenty-one!

My old premed advisor & my daughter. I now have personal connections, and vivid memories of, members of graduating classes a century apart. Just....wow. That very idea, that I know people who graduated 100 years apart (more than that really, since Mr. Flook was a college grad that year while my daughter is a high school senior), makes my head explode. 

Where does that put me? With regards to this concept, I'm not sure I care all that much. Bringing it back to be about me would be egoic, something I try to avoid in Long-Term Recovery Land. But I do know that tinkering with this concept is freakin' cool. 

I think. 




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