18,262 days. 438,288 hours.

 

We all have them - high school graduation reunions. The big one happens this month. 18,262 days,  438,288 hours, 50 years ago, the Mahwah High School Class of '76, the "Spirit of '76" graduated.

This is a little piece I wrote about that monumental day when my gang of friends became adults, thrown out into the cruel world after living blissfully in the cozy confines of high school.

# # # # #

“Fifty years,” I muttered to myself. “18,263 days. 438,312 hours. Fifty years. A lifetime."

It literally was a lifetime. Fifty years since a gang of friends marched down an aisle of lush green stadium grass, the walkway framed by rows of old, creaky aluminum folding chairs. The chalk dust from an impressive football season had long since washed away by belly-deep snowdrifts the previous winter.

Fifty years have passed since that makeshift auditorium was hastily assembled within the confines of a well-worn high school football stadium, its field ringed with aging wooden bleachers and grandstands that were teeming with crying mothers, doting fathers, and fidgety youngsters. Fifty years since those rows of folding chairs on the field were filled with youthful exuberance, a bunch of kids gushing with an innocent naivety about the world that stood before them, its door open wide, beckoning them to enter. Among those one hundred or so graduates sat a motley crew of kids simply known to all as “the gang.” And yes, it was a gang. Not in an Al Capone sort of way. Not in a “gangsta” sort of way. It was a tight-knit group of friends—the gang.

We were dubbed the Spirit of ’76, having graduated during the nation’s bicentennial celebration, but we were far removed from the spirit of our Founding Fathers. We lived during a time in American history where the nation was trying to recover from Vietnam, Watergate, and having to wait in line for hours to buy a tank of gas, but we were blissfully oblivious to it all as we lived from day-to-day, sunup to sundown, hanging with our friends, playing in garage bands, discovering first loves.