My Pirate Log – Kept In a Smiling Distance

 

Probably not a good idea to get caught up in the notes written anciently in your yearbooks by friends and pals, but I did some years ago. Which brought me to writing this poem of verbosity.

 

The other day I dusted off my Pirate Logs after many, many years
Those old high school yearbooks wherein my youthful days appear
And opened each of them as their bindings creaked and cracked
To see if fading memories of youthful times were a myth or fact.

 

The pictures of long ago classmates, all were so quite amusing
And what they thoughtfully wrote in each was funny and effusing
For what they said about our academic times, of things and me
Well, it all brought back thoughts about how I guess I used to be.

 

Throughout those four years were lots of well wishes from all
A lifetime of good lucks and what I should do in the coming fall
Calling me a real swell friend, a cute kid, courteous and a neat guy
Others noted a conceited senior, crazy, a nut, bashful, a dope, OK and shy.

 

Warnings never forget good times in biology, choir, and geometry
But I’m sorry to say now that none of them come up in my memory
A mediocre and fledgling sportster, some noted my athletic feats
Good luck in wrestling and football, luck was needed I concede.

 

My social life and antics was a topic that some just had to mention
You’re a good dancer from an old stomping partner one did spin
Another said remember all the fun we had since the fifth grade
Now gone but I do recall, backtracking through the years I wade.

 

Improve on your record that you set the night before the parade
I just don’t have a clue of that night or what record it was I made!
Be good enough not being caught being bad suggests a dubious repute
Another wrote she’d miss not having a locker in smiling distance of you.

 

Keep your good personality; you’ll succeed in all you do, one said
With no concept of the twists and turns in the years that lay ahead
Stay the same and you’ll never worry about having friends
Sage advice I suppose, but to do so is a life in the past tense.

 

A time budding manhood and unbridled hormones was uncovered
And when young love and the joy of pheromones were discovered
You’re the first boy I ever went steadily steady with she had written
And she had been my first also, my teen heart ever smitten.

 

It was a fun walk through nostalgia leafing through those old pages
But what matters most is here and now, leaving history to the ages
“Old times” never come back and I suppose it’s just as well
Cause today is the moment when into the past the future fell.

 

~By Larry Troxel~