At St. Charles School, eighth grade is a big deal. Most of us were in the same class together for eight or nine years, so when it came time for graduation, it was taken as seriously as a high school graduation. There was generally a sense of camaraderie and wonder at where life would take us next, although I was mostly just looking forward to moving up into the public high school.
There is a list that I keep at the back of one of my photo albums, the one that tracks my life from birth through eighth grade. It was a class assignment from seventh grade, actually, but it was meant to usher us into the final year of middle school and get us thinking about the future. The following is the list of what my classmates in 1995 predicted about my destiny:
1. A journalist at a newspaper (Lois Lane)
2. Writer of nonfiction
3. A housewife with 3 children
4. Librarian and have a big family
5. Business woman
6. Be a soccer star
7. Illustrator for children's books, have a big family who likes soccer
8. Writer
9. Soccer player
10. Play soccer/ be a teacher
11. Professional soccer player
12. A wild person who will get very involved in the year 2000 and disappear
13. The next female Pele, the soccer player
14. Be a teacher
15. A writer for the KC Star and many papers
16. I think you'll be an actress. You have a great personality. Stay sweet.
17. A journalist. You have a great mind. You've been a great friend.
18. A teacher. Follow your heart.
19. I couldn't tell either what you'd be! Follow your dreams!
20. Go to Woodstock and get wild! I doubt it but oh well!
Some of my classmates didn't know me at all, a couple of them knew me very well and some of them knew me better than I thought. I probably knew myself less than anyone and I certainly didn't have any clue about my future. This is what I wrote about myself:
I will go to Oak Park High School and play soccer. I will graduate in the year 2000. I hope to go to MU knowing what I want to do with my life. Now, my future is unpredictable.
So we all completed our eighth grade year and, as was tradition, we went on a class trip to St. Louis for a day. We took one of those fancy buses with the televisions, left very early in the morning and returned very late at night. In the middle we visited an old, beautiful Catholic church, the Arch and several other tourist attractions. Then, a day or two later, we had our graduation ceremony.
Eighth grade graduation was a really long ceremony with a Catholic Mass weaved into it, where a cheesy ballad that we dubbed our "class song" would be played and superlatives would be read. I did not receive a superlative and I don't remember what our class song was, although I want to say it was on the Waiting to Exhale movie soundtrack. It must have been torturous for our loved ones who had to get dressed up and sit-- and stand and kneel and repeat-- through a ceremony longer than a Catholic wedding only to watch a bunch of tweens receive accolades and a rolled up piece of paper. This excepting the parents who forked out tuition for all those years, I'm sure they felt they got their money's worth.
My whole family came to this event and my dad bought me a fancy dress, even though he disliked buying clothes from anywhere other than K-Mart. He even let my Aunt Mary take me shopping for shoes and undergarments at a department store, to make my outfit and the experience complete. I curled my hair and put on makeup and a couple teachers from earlier years came up to me and told me that I was turning into a beautiful young woman.
After our ceremony there was a dance and the next day we were supposed to take a trip to Worlds of Fun, Kansas City's big amusement park, but it got rained out. That was a happy time for me because I felt like I was moving onward and upward and I was finally going to know the iconic high school experience I had been dreaming of. I felt prepared and very excited.
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