Be Proud; We All Did It Together

Thu., June 4, 1998

Keith Proctor Deer Park High School

We were weird…but we did it.

We did it in a place where “formal” can mean “at least wear a T-shirt with a picture of a tux on it” (I love those, they look so real). “Laid Back” was our rule and carefree was our creed.

We did animal impressions and burned enemy mascots in effigy. We ate ice cream (lots of ice cream). We were in movies. We built bonfires and chased farm animals across the football field. We bucked bales and tutored underclassmen. We competed in watermelon eating contests followed by seed-spitting wars. We assassinated one another with squirt guns and then had a pizza party. We forced…uh, ahem, persuaded each other to get in giant tractor tires and rolled them over the fields (very few injuries, honest).

We wrapped cars in toilet paper and rushed home to finish a Humanities paper the night before it was due. And we will never forget Jan. 11, 1996, the day Mrs. O’Halloran didn’t assign any homework.

Together, we probably killed 150,000 bugs by collision on the highway. We juggled, we laughed, we danced (some better than others). We made the grade and passed the class (just barely?). We were dramatist and musicians, writers and Spice Girls. We felt invincible, maybe we still do.

We took the SATs, went to the beach and turned fried shrimp into finger puppets. The exceptional sports fans among us were enthroned on a blue and gold spirit toilet and paraded around the gym during pep assemblies. We were irreverent, but we had fun.

By the grace of our wonderful furnace and ventilation system, we froze in the winter and fried in the summer. We criticized school food and then went back for seconds. We catapulted one another off rope swings. We broke a few bones, but bones mend.

And now the end of high school has come, when we will go away, never to return. But Deer Park’s Class of ‘98 can be proud.

We did it and we did it together.

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