Change

Back in the early part of Malry's Senior year Heather and I received a letter stating that there would be one more opportunity for us to have Malry's senior portrait taken for the yearbook. We had planned on having his portraits taken by a friend at home but the school was not accepting photos from outside photographers for the yearbook. We had, in the past, had very bad experiences with Malry's school pictures because he has no strength in his trunk to sit up and severe scoliosis.  We had no confidence in the photographers, so we scheduled a time for his portraits so that we could both be present during the session.

They say when you go back to school every thing seems smaller. I've found this to be true most times.  When I returned to my high school it didn't seem especially small.  It seemed quite empty. The library is no longer a library. It is a media center. Long gone are the shelves full of books with the Dewey Decimal numbers on them.  They are replaced with the monitors, keyboards and mouses(mice?) of computers. There is no smell of paper and covers full of page after page of information.  There is now the humming sound of small cooling fans on high-speed processors.  The whole thing seems sadly sterile to me.

Heather and I had the occasion to walk from one end of the school to the other to take Malry to the auditorium. The hallways were unusually large.  It seems they have installed windows into many of the classrooms.  I suppose this gives the illusion of bigger hall. I don't really know but it sounds good.  After pushing Malry down the hall towards the auditorium it dawned on me that another reason the hall seemed large was the absence of  lockers. Not one locker did we see. We mentioned this to a teacher.  The response was quite a surprise but painfully obvious in a way.  They don't need lockers because they don't have any books.