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When I was six, my widowed mother placed me in a boarding home for fatherless boys. For the next nine years, I never slept in a room that contained less than 30 other kids in it. So, when I was promoted to senior at the home's high school for my final year there, I had the great pleasure of rooming with just one other classmate, plus the added feature of a semi-private bathroom.

We seniors also had the distinction of walking around the campus in special hats, we called senior bonnets, so all the other kids would know we were the highest in the high school. Classes became less formal, teachers imposed less discipline and we college-bound seniors did more independent work.

As seniors, we frequently went on field trips outside the campus, including city museums, city hall, courts, colleges, sports events and theaters. The highlight was a senior class trip to Washington, D.C., where we sat in on a session of Congress, visited the Smithsonian and visited many other government sites around the city.

On our one free night in Washington, many of us managed to escape from our teacher escorts to enjoy a performance at the local burlesque house. It was a very educational and enlightening experience for we who had spent ten isolated years behind the wlls of a boarding home for boys.

There were 120 in our senior class, and those of us in the top ten percent in academic grades were, in addition to our senior high school classes, enrolled in for-credit freshman college-level courses. Later, when we attended college, we could begin as second semester freshmen, with the tuition paid by our school.

Another benefit of being seniors was that many of us on athletic and other extra-curricular teams were elected to high rankings for the year. I had the honor and pleasure of being chosen captain of our state championship swim team, while my roommate was voted president of the dramatic club.

Graduation services were on a sunny day in June. Each of us had looked forward to this moment for ten years, from first grade through our senior year. We had rarely been outside the walls of the school throughout all of that time, living a life governed by strict schedules and an almost-military discipline. Now we were going out on our own to complete freedom, and we should have been overflowing with elation.

However, to my surprise, I found myself crying, something I hadn't done for years. I noticed many of my classmates, also usually proud of their macho guy attitudes, were also wiping away tears.

Then the reality hit me. After ten years together, we were like brothers in almost every sense of the word, and now we were breaking up our family. We knew we would never be together again as we were on that graduation day. Our senior year ended with deep feelings of sadness for our loss, as well as joy for our emerging into a new world beyond the school campus.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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