Okay, I don’t mean time travel like in the Escape from the Past trilogy. I wish I could travel around as I pleased, but we all know only Max Nerds can do that. But I am returning to my old high school, Gymnasium August Dicke Schule in Solingen, Germany for an author visit. It’s a strange feeling to revisit the place I spent nine years from 5th through 13th grade.
It’s where I went through puberty and struggled with grades. Unlucky for us back then, we had only one token – sorry Michael – boy in our class. It must have been quite strange for him to be surrounded by hormone charged girls. I was quite shy back then and even more introverted than I’m now. Some of that shyness disappeared out of necessity, interacting with colleagues, raising kids and joining a community.
So, I’m excited to return to the old walls of my school, talking to the teens who sit in the same spots I occupied forty years ago. Much has changed, of course. We didn’t have computers, cell phones, Facebook or Twitter. We wrote on paper, talked on a house phone and if we wanted to hang out we’d visit our friends face-to-face.
I’m a child of the seventies and I still remember wearing miniskirts my mother had sewn. After the Abitur we all went our separate ways. Of all the classmates I probably went the farthest from home. Not that I planned it that way. Life happened and one thing led to another. Out of a one-year market research assignment in Wichita, KS, grew a U.S. life with my husband and three children.
And as I’m preparing for my meeting with my old school, I realize that my least favorite subjects in high school were history and English. As a U.S. author of historical fiction this makes no sense. But then life is full of surprises and just about anything is possible.
Especially if you’re still in high school.