Grads share small-town connection

Students’ experiences at Cheney High School are marked not only by our small and close-knit high school community but also by the small town in which we’ve grown up.

Asking around the senior class, you are sure to get mixed feelings.

There are those who love Cheney for all it is, those who hate it just as much, and certainly plenty who have enjoyed their time here but are very ready to move on.

None of us can deny, however, that the small-town experience has shaped our years here.

Bonded together in sixth grade, every Cheney student became perhaps closer than desired in the narrow hallways of our one and only Cheney Middle School. There it began, our saga.

Consistent with the nature of a small town like Cheney, we knew that the majority of us would be together for the next seven years, having no other choices in the middle or high school markets.

Across the wide spectrum of personalities and backgrounds, we shared the common experience of Cheney. We shared a bomb shelter middle school (for those of you on whom this remark is lost, well, come out to Cheney and see for yourselves).

We shared mediocre P.E. swing dancing and good ol’ “Oh Johnny Oh.” We shared freshman health class, where we learned things such as the oddities of lonely old men.

We shared sleep-deprived days resulting from our common procrastination (did someone mention a plant project?). We shared WASL testing and the bitter truth that there was no getting out of it.

We shared football games, dances, concerts, test anxieties, answers and even homework on occasion (sorry, Mr. Straulser). We shared stories from a teacher with seven-some birthdates and jokes about a few teachers who’ve grown less than a healthy head of hair, and we’ve been careful not to share business tips because we know that “opportunity costs.”

Together, the Cheney Class of 2006 has come to know our community. Even a trip to the grocery store might contain a chat with the parent of a childhood friend, an awkward “hello” to a current teacher or a conversation with your classmate, the bag boy.

We know Cheney, and we know each other. We are bonded by our community, able to laugh when kids from Spokane act as though Cheney is a far-off mystical land.

But soon, all of this will come to a much-needed, but perhaps a little scary, end.

As we near the long-anticipated moment of graduation, all of these things we’ve shared seem so long gone. The very town that has connected our class for so long now acts as our great divider.

Each one of us must decide whether we wish to continue our small-town tradition or break free and explore the big-city life. And so we stand, separated into 1) those who choose to move to a big city, 2) those who choose to move to another small town, 3) those who choose to stay in Cheney, and 4) those whose parents have guilted them into choosing to stay in Cheney.

And there it is, as simple as that, the fork in our road, our futures in a (very small) nutshell.