The Wide Angle: Roaming the halls after school

Published 6:32 pm Tuesday, February 4, 2025

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Anybody who has grown up across different generations will inevitably have a slightly different definition of the word “experience.”

These days, moments are rich in technological infused experiences shared across a variety of mediums. I’m not saying it’s better or worse than those experiences I had when I was younger, but they are different.

Oftentimes, experiences are directly related to entertainment and the fact of the matter is that technology these days makes entertainment easier. It’s something I’ve made use of from time to time because my generation was on the forefront of when things like cellphones came into being and began changing.

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Still, these days are far away from those things I experienced in my youth, which is unfortunately getting further and further away, made more noticeable by the fact that I just turned 51.

On a side note, it’s kind of uncomfortable getting closer to that over 55 menu at restaurants.

During a recent event I was covering, I was watching with mild curiosity a pair of teenagers sitting next to each other, both with their cellphones out. By the act alone it wasn’t much different than groups of teenagers I’ve seen and even those teenagers were glued to their phone and off somewhere by themselves, embarking on an endless scroll through the online world.

At times like these, I have to tell myself not to be that old man. This is their world now, not mine and while it would be easy to throw about “when I was that age…” pieces of “wisdom,” I have to understand that it’s their choice, whether I agree with it or not.

However, it does get me thinking every so often about the kind of experiences I had at that age, something I suppose everybody does when they begin getting older.

In particular, I have sometimes looked at how I entertained myself or kept myself busy. I had video games, of course, so that really wasn’t much different and I can remember just pounding laps around our block and town (280 people in old Lake Wilson so pounding laps anywhere didn’t take real long) and talking about the dumbest things, but still finding plenty of laughs along the way.

There were jaunts south of town, up the hill that led past the cemetery to the T-intersection beyond, and then usually a right-hand turn to what we called the three-way bridge (even though it was a proper four-way intersection).

Jaunts north of town, including one memorable trip to Current Lake, a full nine miles on the pedal along Highway 91. Adventures on county roads and adventures in some of the tree-filled areas of town that only us kids knew about.

All of these things were without a phone in site.

But there were days when it was just me and while it was a challenge to not camp out in the house all day, I had other things I could do. I was lucky enough to grow up around horses and so for a number of years if boredom became too much of a thing I could take a short walk to the barn we rented on the outskirts and just hang out with the horse all day, or our barn cats.

It was a simple mode of fun, but it was something I cherished all the same. The animals were just as much my friends — sometimes more so — as the humans.

One other advantage I had was access. There were times where one or the other of my parents would need to go to the school for some reason

I’m guessing kids of teachers will have some of these same experiences, such as being able to turn on the lights of the gym so I could win thrilling NBA games on a last-second buzzer beater.

I could work on the location of my “blazing” fast ball by throwing a tennis ball against the wall, or I could simply explore.

Chandler-Lake Wilson’s high school was in Chandler and of the two sites (elementary was in Lake Wilson) was probably the most fun to wander about in after hours or at night.

In contrast to Lake Wilson’s one-floor school, Chandler’s was a three-story facade thick with history encompassed by its brick walls.

I can remember those times after winning the big game on a well-planned three-pointer to a non-existent crowd, I would just wander, never really going into the rooms (most were locked), but simply walking. A quiet and old building like that was rich in imagination, sometimes too much so, because walking into the basement to the cafeteria area was just slightly off of being terrifying. If memory serves right, you walked down the stairs and then turned to walk through this dimly lit corridor of walls that were just this side of being raw cement to finally exit into the small eating area. The oldness of that part of the building could weigh on a person and a kid with probably too much of an imagination could well imagine a skeletal hand reaching around the corner late at night to pull you into the shadows.

These excursions, while my parents were doing whatever it was they were doing, ingrained themselves into a lasting life experience, so much so that a dream the other night had me walking through the school again on a visit. I found myself walking the same halls with the same familiar lockers past the same familiar library.

Unerroringly, I found my senior-year locker and looked at the padlock wondering out loud if I still remembered the combination.

I didn’t and so wasn’t allowed to experience what was undoubtedly the absolute disaster I remembered it as being.

Those were good days. Memorable days. Days of opportunity and serve only to remind us that those are also days to be cherished.

They are also examples of how life can be lived away from a screen.