Class of '96

Year: 1996
Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 18

Hold on to your monocles; this one's photo-heavy.

For my senior year of high school, I left home to move in with my Aunt Joyce, whose son Jake was my best friend.  I had other good friends in Raymond, and I wanted to graduate high school with them.  And I did!  Yay for being smart!  (I almost didn't, thanks to the stupid, yet required course CALM, which I neglected because of its stupidity.  My teacher had pity on me, and I managed to squeak out a passing grade.)

I don't know if they still do this today, but back in my day, Raymond High School grad was a two-night affair.  May 9 was the senior prom, and May 10 was lunch banquet and the actual ceremony later in the afternoon.

Jake Heninger and Shauna Lunn (Fun fact: spell-check wants me to change Heninger to Herring.)

Prom was a Thursday night, and we were given the Friday off of school for the festivities.  Jake was dating a girl named Shauna Lunn at the time, so she was obviously his date.  I asked a girl I was interested in named Alison Quist.  Yes, she was Anders Quist's younger sister.  (My sister's sister-in-law is no relation whatsoever to me, so it wasn't weird.)  I met Alison when Anders and Jenny got married, and had seen her on several occasions since then.

Alison and me (Fun fact: I had no idea what to do with my hand in this photo)

Before prom, a large group of us went to eat in the banquet room of the New Dynasty Chinese restaurant.  The MT Vibes who were graduating this year (six of us, if I remember correctly) plus some other good friends and our dates were there.

Mardi Smith and Travis Bissett, for example.  That's Jenn Smith in the shadows on the left, and Shauna on the right (Fun fact: Travis and Mardi got married a few years after this, and Travis now works in the same law firm that my wife does.)

After dinner, we headed back to Raymond for the dance, which was being held at the high school.  It was a Roman theme, so the gym was decorated to resemble ancient Rome, including a life-size plastic horse with a chariot.  In the lobby of the school, the scroll with all of our names on it (there were 82 of us in the Class of '96) was on display so we could have our pictures taken with it.  Later, it would go up on the wall of the gym with all of the other past classes.  (I was the fourth one in my family to graduate from RHS: Rob in '90, Jenny in '91, and Amy in '93 preceded me.)

Alison and me with the scroll (Fun fact: I'm blocking my name with my shoulder)

I had been to scores of dances as a teenager, and this one was no different save for the fact that I mostly just danced with Alison.  That, and we were dressed up nicer than usual.  I was my usual suave, charming self.  And by that, I mean I was overwhelmed with shyness and clammed right up.  Alison was good about it, though.  She's talkative enough that she was able to carry the brunt of the conversation.  This was my first date ever, and it was with an absolutely gorgeous girl, so I was very nervous.

After the dance, a bunch of us went to Regan Dahl's house and watched Mr. Bean until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.  Then Jake and I drove Alison and Shauna to their homes, and that was the end of night one of grad.

We woke up at an ungodly hour (by a teenager's reckoning) the next morning to prepare for the banquet.  Jake wanted to honor our Scottish heritage (and draw attention to himself) by wearing a kilt to grad.  He didn't have a kilt, though, so he ended up borrowing one from Alison.  It was the Alberta tartan.  The banquet was pretty good, even though I was exhausted from the previous night.  Our parents were there for this part.  I forget a lot of what happened, but I do remember that some of us, including the six graduating MT Vibes, sang after lunch.  We were a little delayed, because Ted Holt was outside waiting for his date to arrive, and to kill time while we were standing there waiting for Ted, Carol Dahl asked (using the microphone, so everyone could hear) what Jake was wearing under the kilt.  Jake's answer: "Boxers as well as briefs."  We eventually sang our song, which might have been "Bridge Over Troubled Water", but I'm too lazy to go find my journal and look it up.

Back: Jaron Macmullen, Mark Svenson, Darren Ellingson, Travis Bissett, Trevor Heninger, Will Jensen
Front: Regan Dahl, me, Kevin Calder, Jake Heninger, Scott Parker, not Ted Holt (Fun fact: what's Jake doing with his mouth?)

Later that afternoon, we had the grad ceremony.  There was a whole program, but it was kind of boring (all grads are) so I won't go into too many details.  The class historians were Regan and Travis, and their presentation was quite entertaining.  The valedictorian was Jaron MacMullen.  Then we were each, one at a time, given scrolls.  They weren't diplomas, because there was still over a month of school left, so they basically said, "Congratulations!  You'll graduate this June if you don't screw it up!"

Dad, me, Mum (Fun fact: Whenever I look at this photo, I wish that my arm was around Dad, too.)

Shauna, Jake, me, Alison (Fun fact: Alison and I never dated, because I was such a wuss back then, but we had many years of interesting friendship.)

Back: Will Jensen, Mark Svenson, Darren Ellingson, Trevor Heninger, Jaron MacMullen, Jake Heninger
Middle: Kevin Calder, Regan Dahl, Scott Parker, Travis Bissett, Ted Holt, me
Front: Carol Dahl, Mardi Smith, Jade Chan, Jodie Freeze, Michelle Atwood, Lana Healy
(Fun fact: I went and changed out of my robe, then discovered that my friends were having a group shot, so I don't match them.)

After the ceremony, most of the graduating class plus dates rented a family recreation centre called Laffs, or something (it doesn't exist anymore, so I can't double-check that without digging up my journal) from midnight until 8:00 in the morning.  It was a lot of fun.  There was laser tag, a ball pit that we normally wouldn't be able to use, but there were no little kids there, and all sorts of games.  Alison and I won some cheap little plastic bat rings, and we climbed around the climbing things meant for kids playing Batboy and Batgirl.  All-in-all, it was a great time, and I'm glad that I graduated with my friends instead of staying at Bellerose Composite High School in St. Albert and graduating with people who were mostly strangers.  My friends from church in St. Albert all went to a different high school.