May is a month for memories.

As the school days ease up and teachers give in to the do-nothing mentality, all we students really have to complete is a high school scrapbook for English class.

Ah. The senior legacy. Though mine is pretty bland looking because of my lack of patience for stickers and borders, the act of making the book itself forced me to go through a whole lot of picture albums. That’s 12 years of scholastic soap operas and good times.

I guess I didn’t really start using the camera until high school. Because before then, it was all family pictures, with scenes of me plump, jumping around, and wrinkling my nose for the camera.

But I did have a thick collection of image shots. 90s was the decade of milky backgrounds and posing pals. I remember the coolest thing to do in middle school was to go to the mall together (West Oaks back then, because Katy Mills and First Colony didn’t have image shots yet) and take those glamour pictures. We would be mesmerized and giddy, trying to choose from the array of colorful backgrounds of dragons and butterflies and hearts and bears.

Then with a swipe of lip gloss and a hand through the hair, all of us would pucker pretty for the genteel poses. The next day in school, the pictures were eagerly distributed to all our friends to show off in wallets and binders.

Then came high school and the accessibility of the digital camera. Film didn’t need to be saved for special occasions anymore, and so I snapped away with abandon at every goofy moment.

These, were the real pictures, the pictures of spontaneity. Friends with hands held to the camera, sideways pictures by a laughing photographer, take one take two take three.

And these specific moments with these specific people brought back something vivid and real. A memory shared suspended in time without past present future. And for once, I stopped thinking about the exciting future before me, and about the memorable past.

Four years of high school gone in a jiff. It seemed like yesterday I rode nervously on the yellow school bus to attend high school freshman year. With new schedules teachers classes times, I was thrown into something wonderful, challenging.

And as the years went by, as I went through phases of innocence, impulsiveness, disillusionment, independence, I grew I grew I grew.

There were the ups the downs the classes the friends the late night epiphanies the early morning groans, but all in all, high school, was the place where we all came of age.

The mistakes made, the challenges taken, the friendships formed, every action choice idea left its mark. Days and days have pulled me back and forth, chewed me down, spit me out, tugged me to pieces and assembled me back together again. But through the whole tumultuous experience something continuous was at work, something of a string that knit me into the person with the ideas and the confidence I have today.