Four Years' Worth Of Stories

This class started high school back in August of 2000, one of the hottest Augusts on record. We got off early for heat nine days right in the beginning, in retrospect a good way to ease into high school. We've got air conditioning now, so we won't be able to ease out with half days, and future generations of R-II students won't know the fun of getting out early for heat.

If you don't think about it, August 2000 seems just like yesterday, but further analysis picks up on a lot of events that stick in our minds. 2000 was another election year; George Bush and Al Gore were in the heat of their campaigns - sorry to bring that up. The reality TV show craze started about then with "Survivor", and we're still dealing with the effects of that. The Mets lost the World Series in a clear victory for the Yankees, unlike the election in November… Those of us who stayed on election night up to see who the President would be were disappointed many, many times while they decided Florida was "too close to call". That dragged on all the way through December, with various methods of counting, name-calling, and bickering over "chads" captivating the whole nation (except those watching reality TV).

Pre-September 11^th 2001 is hard to remember. Dale Earnhardt died, which was a big deal in Montgomery County. Enron collapsed somewhere in there, making Kenneth Lay everyone's favorite punching bag (barely edging out former Congressman Gary Condit as the most hated person in the country). However, when the planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. and the world changed profoundly. Everything from sports to entertainment halted following the attacks - not even Ken Lay mattered for a while. Afterward, we dealt with the anthrax-in-the-mail scare, and another plane crashed in New York. Barry Bonds set the new home run record at 73, a story that almost got lost in the shuffle. The U.S. started its invasion of Afghanistan, partnering with the "Northern Alliance" against the Taliban. Everyone anxiously watched as the situation played out, and soon Kabul had fallen. The hunt for Osama bin Laden was at its most intense, with "daisy cutter" bombs finally stopping his stream of videotaped propaganda that the news networks kept stealing from Al-Jazeera.

2002 was a new start - the War on Terrorism continued, and John Walker Weird-Taitor Lindh was in the spotlight for a while. The New England Patriots beat the Rams in the Super Bowl, but we'll just pretend like that didn't happen - the Rams choked much like Bush did on that pretzel a month earlier. The Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, and there was a great scandal with the ice skating medals, foreshadowing the anti-France fun we all had a year later. The Canadian and Russian teams eventually both got gold medals, and most people promptly forgot the story. In an alternate universe, the era of peace, stability, and understanding continued in the Middle East. Elizabeth Smart ran away or was kidnapped, but that turned out OK for her - weird, but OK. The Anaheim Angels won the World Series, amazingly. Amid international calls to action, the Swedish Wonder himself, Hans Blix started his search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The tensions between the U.S., UN, and Iraq increased, and the year finished up with some media hysteria about SARS, shutting down most of Asia and Canada, if you believed the news stories.

The international debates about Iraq continued into 2003, with various U.S. officials making their case to the UN, and France and Russia kind of almost making a case. The Columbia Space Shuttle was lost upon reentry, and seven astronauts were killed, a tragedy for NASA. The Buccaneers won the Super Bowl much to the chagrin of Raiders fans. Backlash against France's anti-war/ anti-U.S. actions got many people saying "Freedom Fries" and "Freedom Toast", and the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted because of some comment one of them made. Many people thought these trends were kind of stupid; some of us had disliked France and the Dixie Chicks long before it was a political statement. The U.S. invasion of Iraq began in March, and the country quickly fell, despite the insistence of the Iraqi Information Minister, who still doesn't think there are any troops at Baghdad Airport. Debate over Iraq captivated the nation for most of the summer, until California governor Gray Davis got recalled. Stepping up to the plate to replace him were such figures as Gary Coleman, Ariana Huffington, and Cruz Bustamante, but of course The Terminator easily defeated them. It would've been a good year to invest in celebrity trials - Martha Stewart, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson, and Rush Limbaugh all got in trouble with the law, much to the delight of CNN. Saddham Hussein was found and captured in some sort of "spider hole" (whatever that means) in December, and given a much needed haircut and shave in front of some cameras.

Now it's 2004, and we've already had some historical events. The Mars landers came back with some cool data about the Red Planet, which was almost noted as much as Britney Spears' multiple-hour marriage. An anti-doily biased jury railroaded Martha Stewart in her trial. Janet Jackson exposed herself at the Super Bowl, sparking a long overdue debate: Why were Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performing at the Super Bowl? What football fan likes them? Haiti had its coup right on schedule, displacing Jean Aristide as President, much the way Howard "Macho Man" Dean was displaced in the Democratic primaries by John Kerry (who by the way served in Vietnam). That debate on marriage opened up again, after some antics in San Francisco and Massachusetts. Spain suffered a bomb attack by terrorists on March 11^th, the worst in the region. The 9/11 Commission is questioning various officials, and the reconstruction of Iraq continues.

Some of these stories we'll try to forget, and some we'll remember when we read inaccurate summaries of them in our kids' history books. Either way, we'll be reminded of High School and what was going on in our lives. We're all living history, and some of us will influence it down the line. Here's hoping the next four years are good for us all, and that the election doesn't drag on; I can't imagine any sane person "approving those messages".