A.T. Mahan High School - Keflavik, Iceland

How many people were in your graduating class? 500? 1000? 1500?

Well here is a picture of my graduating class in Keflavik, Iceland in 1991. All seventeen of us, although one did not make it, making it a class of 16 people who graduated. Thanks to facebook I have been lucky enough to get in touch with most of them in the past two months after almost twenty years.

There is no way to fully share this experience with anyone who has not lived it sadly. I will however do my best to give it some life because it was simply the most amazing time of my life and in a category all by itself.

Recently I was chatting with another friend from the days of Iceland we both agree there is nothing in life that will compare or even come close to a related experience. As I have said before I had no intentions of going to Iceland in the first place and so my whole attitude was negative in the beginning. It did not take long to realize that these people were going to be my only friends whether I liked it or not. I met my best-friend on the first day of school. See that little Filipino guy in the front? That's Eddie Parker, later and forever known to me and a few others as Mr. Ed. I remember how I met him as if it were yesterday and though the story itself is pretty lame it somehow remains a so vivid in my mind. First day of school, first class of the day he was cool as he informed that i had missed a belt loop in my pants. So that's it, nothing dramatic, but for whatever reason that is all it took for us to become instant friends.

It's pretty interesting how living a small plot of land on a small little island in middle of the ocean suddenly changes your life in ways that you would never have imagined. It did not matter who was popular and who wasn't in the good ole USA because everyone knew each other and popularity simply had to be left at the door. As did many other things, ie: Fashion, Current Events, Popular TV Shows and countless other things. You didn't have to worry about being someone because nobody was anything and everybody was everything. You learned to get over things fast, you had to when you simply can't get away from someone because they are everywhere. Arguments and fights couldn't last because then you wouldn't have anyone to help you get through the day. There was no black or white, rich or poor, or 'I'm better than you are '. The island and school was too small for that and there was not any room for all that.

As seniors we were very lucky to have a little room that we could all congregate into and get away from the other 182 students(grades 7-11). The Senior Lounge was our special place to go and relax, unwind, and it was all ours. No under class men were allowed to enter and no teachers dared invade our space. This room held for us secretes, freedom, our own reality and gave us the space to be alone, which was very hard to do anywhere else on base. There are so many memories that come rushing in just as I type this, yet I seem to remember one of the best things about the lounge is was it was like Vegas. What happened there, stayed in there and is still in there.

With all the things that people think we missed out on by being in such an isolated place, we had the opportunity to experience things that those people never will. Did you have a Senior Field Trip? If so did it include seeing one the greatest waterfalls in the world? How about sitting in a natural hot spring, surrounded by snow? Those are just two of the amazing things we were able to be a part of together and as friends. I wonder how many people in the world can say they knew everyone they graduated with?

I often refer to my time in Iceland as a total and complete break from reality. In some ways it be seen as primitive compared to what the high school kids at the time were doing in the United Sates. In many ways our options were limited which gave us reasons to become creative in what we did and how we spent our time. Silly as it may sound today, our days and nights were spent bowling, playing pool, playing cards, watching movies 4-5 times a week and many, many trips to the Air Terminal for no other reason than to get hot chocolate and get out of the house. We were able to have some of the same rights of passage as high school kids in the states: House Parties(ok so it was really a rented community center), Drinking and trying to hide it from our parents, and Prom. Our prom lasted for close to twenty four hours and included dinner at the Officers Club, A Movie, Bowling, Breakfast, and a few other things that I don't remember for one reason or another.

So what happens when the school year ending gets closer and closer? You begin to realize that these people that you have spent so much time with, more time than any other high school class would spend together in the world, have in many ways become your family. Perhaps the worst thing about being a military brat is always moving from place to place, I know it brought me to a point where I didn't really care about making friends. It was just easier to be a loner. However, in Iceland the rules changed. Not only did I make friends, my whole life, as well as theirs, revolved around each other. There was point where if you saw me, you saw Mr. Ed, David Hillers and David Mayes, almost as if the four of us were one person. In hind sight it was probably kinda freaky...or would have been if we were in the states.

Amongst all the things we had shared and were still sharing it starts to settle in that someones father or mother could get orders at any moment taking them away from what had become our life. For some it came as a blow almost too much to take, why had we been forced to come this island and meet these people and become so close with them only to have them ripped out of our lives...yet again. As much as we were adults we were still kids and it wasn't easy. Why did someone who you had spent pretty much every single day with in the past nine months suddenly shut down in despair over how to handle doing something that we had all done so many times, move on? We were about to graduate high school, finally after so many years, yet so many times we cried, we were sad and at a loss for words. Saying goodbye is never easy, but it is twice as hard when you have to do it over and over and over in just a couple months time.

The great thing about going to A.T. Mahan High School in Keflavik, Iceland is that you were allowed to be a person, a real person. We were allowed to cry and show feelings and emotions, even if we thought we could control them and no one faulted us for it. We were allowed to share a bond that no one else in the world could have access to. We were able to all be friends without all the bullshit that still plaques high school kids today, we all belonged....to each other.