While I did not attend Bartlett High School, so much of my time as a teen intersected with others from that school. I might even say my interactions with them rivaled my own high school peers. Whether it was from...

• Working (and flirting) at Kroger Bartlett at 16, Piggly Wiggly at 17, and the mall later
• Playing down in the low post the best a 163 lb, 5' 9¾" guy nicknamed Shaquille O'Bill can muster for pickup games at Bellevue and Singleton
• Participating in those weekly football games at Weaver's where I earned that Moose nickname
• Casting rebel calls as Wild Bill to stumbling over my feet in another Saturday night of line dancing at Casper Creek
• Salivating over the last bit of Melrose Place; catching the first half of Monday Night Football (it was a school night after all); and enduring a bag of steamed burgers from the Krystal's on Austin Peay Hwy
• Attoning at Sycamore View Church of Christ

Last night, I watched a video, Bartlett High School Class of 1996 Senior Video:

YouTube Link

As I looked on, there were the people of romance and friendship. I laugh as I see another: I rub the keepsake on my chin as I recall how it happened an hour before I asked her out to prom—that basketball scar that pushed me over the edge with a last shot of courage. Only later did I find that her need of a dress was actually that and not a gentle rejection of me. Just the actual dress. As if I was obsessing over that much sequin. Funny how we are so hyper-sensitive to every nuance to us in our teens yet we miss chunks of the big picture.

I saw the faces and they were every bit of who I remembered. Much more can be said of a cascading of memories...the smiles...the pangs. As I watched the video, a general nostalgia for 1995-1996 turned to something more personal, deeper:

And that REM song was playing in my mind
And three and a half minutes
Felt like a lifetime

-Better Than Ezra, A Lifetime

The faces feel like home while the names are largely forgotten. There are those in the video that will forever be there.