Demolition of Old School Begins
I thought, when I heard they were going to do it, that I would feel something akin to "YES!" For a building that I spent the better part of 13 years of my life in, hating nearly every minute of it, I thought the 12 year old boy in me would be joyous.
But, looking at the pictures (Thanks to Dorchester Times), I feel a sense of sadness. Something about getting older... the bad memories seem faded, tarnished, while the good memories - while they may be fewer - seem to shine brighter, almost blinding in my mind. Like watching an old projector movie, some scenes are hard to see, while others are clear and vivid.
There's also a great sense of loss. There is always something about your hometown - especially a very small one where you know everyone, every house, every dusty corner - that seems "permanent". In your mind it seems frozen in time, like it will never change. But then you hear about someone you know passing away, or the house you used to live in being painted a hideous color, or....
or your school being torn down.
Having spent almost 7 hours a day there for 13 years, I still know every nook and cranny of the place. I have spent hours in every classroom, I carved my initials in the back wall of the stage, I once posted "secret admirer" notes in all the lockers, classrooms, and bulletin boards of the girls in my Eighth Grade class (13 of them, if I remember right). I kissed my first girlfriend (I wonder what happened to her) every morning on the back stairs that no one else seemed to use. I once broke in through a side door and wandered around on a Saturday morning when no one else was there.
But now it's being wrecked. And I am sad.
I don't know why I feel this way. I haven't been to Dorchester in more than 20 years. The day before I left for college, when I helped my mother move to Lincoln, I left and never looked back. I think I once took my wife there, driving around, but that was a brief visit. My mother recently went back and took a lot of pictures, of the school, the houses we lived in... I look forward to her sharing them. Why? I don't know. I live more than a thousand miles away now and probably never will visit the town again....
But it was home.
