Graduation Day (and the evening and day and days that followed)

So, forty-six years on -- or thereabouts -- CHS 232 Graduation Day has been on my mind a lot in recent days. It was one of the best days of my life; and the days of summer 1973 immediately thereafter set the course of my life for good and ill according to Providence.
 
I know this day was traumatic for some of my classmates -- family dynamics; disappointments regarding great expectations; the end of an era (many of us who spent four years together everyday have never seen each other since...and some we can never see again)...but for me it was truly the beginning of the adventure of the rest of my life -- as many had promised it certainly would be.
   
Like many of you, my folks gave me a party the evening of that day with many assembled friends, and friends of family. It left me gifted -- in every possible way.
   
An unexpected gift -- in an ellipsis of  time spent away from the party -- was opened in discovery with an uncommonly beautiful, generous and sweet young woman visiting from the West Coast who was way advanced in life experience compared to me and thus most intriguing. She was very much into profound intimacies under the influence of good marijuana and "The Dark Side of the Moon". (Sadly, after an encore engagement the following day, she flew away home never to be together with me again.) Whether she planted a seed, or only caused to bloom that which was nascent in me, under her influence (for better or worse), I became an incurable romantic thereafter in my course through life.
 
 In looking back, it is a curiosity to me that of all those "days gone by" of which I might have sung, the last day of all in the class act of the 232nd graduating class of Central High School of Philadelphia stands out to me for the first steps I took in life beyond "Dear Central High". With eyes ever directed still toward the brightness of the future, I'll "ne'er forget those days gone by, those glorious days of old".