Homecoming 1999

All this is, is a journal entry which has been edited from six pages in length. I wrote it upon returning from the Homecoming football game on September 25, 1999. This is another piece of writing I'm proud of. Something inside me told me not to stop writing. There was so much nostalgia in the air. I think I was inspired. Yes, and everything in here happened.

Homecoming. Rather HC '99. It means more this year than it ever has. The decorations: beautiful. The banners: Spectacular. And the turnout: It would rival any of Utah's sports franchises. What I have to say is this: Homecoming isn't about selling T -shirts, winning football games, decorations or even the kids, who as sophomores, you knew were going to be Homecoming King's and Queen's. No, Homecoming isn't about this.

It's about what the title says: coming home. HC '99 was about your friends accepting you, because you drove up alone. Buying Laffy Taffy for four, and Coke's for two. It's about shivering, with jacket and shorts, and sticking it out because it's Homecoming. It's about sixth-graders thinking you're a freshman. It's knowing the cheers because you are a senior, knowing the cheers because you have school spirit, and new traditions because you have to change. It's deja vu. It's Cyprus cheerleaders, orange glow sticks, souvenirs and hearing and dishing out the truth.

It's seeing the upset and witnessing history in the making. It's "E"'s painted on your face with red lipstick and the relief you feel when you can finally tell your old crushes step-sister's the truth. It's being accepted because you have money, stamps that don't show up on your hand, bad parking, full parking lots, stealing balloons and dropping confetti. These are the days. The days we live for. The days we dream for.

Your senior year homecoming, you're taught from the day you start your freshman year is a big event. And it may be about taking risks, or not being afraid to be confident. It may be about new suits, new dresses, new personalities, new traditions. To some, it's the second most fun thing to do on homecoming night: Reliving the past year of your life through slides, with friends you haven't seen in a day, a week, a month depending on what school they go to. It's never being asked. It's girls trying on new dresses at a department store imagining themselves at the premier event of the fall. It's about getting your hair done and staying home. It's writing poetry, speaking only two words an hour. It's jealous friends and clean cars.

But it's really about coming home. It's seeing an old friend from last years Advanced Creative Writing Class in front of you, and being afraid to say hello. And waiting after the game, and not seeing her. It's the girl you waited all summer to come home, and holding her hand as she flirts with you, and being brave enough to tell her someone else likes her .

It's everyone, young and old, past, present, and future East classes bridging generation gaps by cheering for one thing: Dear old East High. The old building and its graduates and the new building and its future graduates. It's the seniors (and the rest of the classes for that matter) hearing stories of the old East High, and the nostalgia of past cheerleaders joining the present and not missing a beat. It's seeing your old friends, old acquaintances and people who at one time you had a class with, or the faces you remember seeing as you headed to second period your sophomore year.

You remember the poetry reading at City Art. It was the night you talked about the good looking girl who's now less attractive, and her brother, and the fact that you know his girlfriend of sixteen months, but her parents don't since she's fifteen. It's keeping a secret. It's recalling the days with the fastest girl at your school, your best friend of sixteen years, and feeling saddened when you find out that at age sixteen, she's pregnant. It's feeling bad, because she cannot run from this. It's knowing she wrote. For one month, she wrote. It's finding out two years later that her sister, at sixteen, is pregnant. You worry about her thirteen year-old autistic brother. But it's joy and relief when "the good one of the family" is still in school. She's in Southern Utah, and she writes, and she calls you cute, and thinks you're older than you are, because you're so much more mature than her eighteen year-old sister with a fifteen month-old baby. And she, with her mature sister, came home. You see them after school, and are puzzled as to why they didn't go to Homecoming. But at least they came home.

It's not just the people who came home. It's the people who live in Wisconsin or Oregon, or Arizona, or Washington, who wish they could. Or the people, who although perfectly able to, don't come, don't care. And you think of them and what they're doing, and wondering if they're thinking of you.

It's about having high expectations. Great expectations, and being disappointed. It's about being there to say, "I was at Homecoming '99." It's dateless seniors, saying they don't like dances, or that they don't want to go as their own conspiracy theory, when in reality, they didn't get a date.

I guess it's about all of this and more. It's lingering after the game to talk to the friends who accepted you, not wanting to leave, and realizing the true meaning of why they call it "Homecoming". It just so happens that this year's is 1999, and your senior year. It's a highlight of your life. The last of your high school years. Until you come back of course. It's remembering these six days. These special days. These are the days.

Move onto Homecoming 2001

Previously on Apexsensatin : Now on Apex : Apex Archives : Next time on Apexsensatin