I went to a high school with about 3,000 students. I do not remember the exact numbers, but I am sure that there were just over 600 in my graduating class. To have 3,000 students and 600 graduates in any given year, each class had to be smaller the next. To account for drop-outs, I would assume the classes in my high school had to be something like 900, 800. 700 and 600. I would have thought that a freshman class of 900 would have yielded a senior class of more than 600, but the assumed numbers are not unrealistic.
My most vivid memories by far are of the kids in my class. This is not surprising. I went to high school with this same group of kids for all four years and they were the kids with whom I shared the classroom day-to-day. In fact, I had been in the same classrooms with some of them since kindergarten.
Contact with both the older and younger kids was more peripheral. Upon reflection, I find my memories of the older kids many times more vivid than the younger kids. Given my assumptions as to class size, I attended high school with approximately 2,100 kids in the three classes ahead of me. Of those who were there in my freshman year, the seniors had only one year to embed themselves in my impressionable young brain; the juniors would ultimately have two years and the sophomores three years.
Each subsequent year, another 900 freshmen came on-board. I would therefore have had exposure to 2,700 students in the three classes which followed me. Like the older kids, but in reverse, I would share the high school experience for three years with the class immediately following mine, two for the next class and only one for those who were freshman in my senior year.
Why then, when I had exposure to more younger kids than older kids, would I have memories so much more finely chiseled of the older kids? The contrast is stark. I have vivid memories of many the older kids and virtually no memories of those in the following classes. I graduated from high school in 1960 and have now reached an age when memory fade gets worse. (Dave Barry says only the nouns go; I think he is right.) The website CLASSMATES offers reproduction yearbooks when they can find them. They have my class and the three classes behind mine but only one of the ensuing classes. I tried to quantify my experience. For my class, I recalled 295 of those in the yearbook. For the Class of 1959, the corresponding number was 55; for the Class of 1961, only 12. The older ones may have faded from my consciousness, but apparently the younger ones were practically never there.
There are reasons that a 17-year old can be very impressive to a 14-year old. For starters, there is straightforward mental and physical growth. The older teen is both larger and, while not statistically smarter, more experienced. Older students can be intimidating. They know stuff and have done stuff to which the younger kids still aspire.
The older kids are also further along the road to physical maturity. In the fantasy life of most young males, there is a girl, likely older, to whom he might attribute his own coming-of-age. (I’ll take the pun.) The newly-pubescent look to the future for learning and inspiration. The future is personified by the older kids, not the younger ones. An older kid might be interested in a younger kid but only to the degree the younger kid is more mature, i.e. more like an older kid.
Routine maturation aside, the older students have had the time and opportunity to stand out. A freshman will remember the athlete who lettered in three sports, or a junior with the coolest car, or a senior who turned down Harvard to go to Yale, or maybe the girl who got pregnant and had to leave school. It would take a 14-year old prodigy making a solo piano debut with an acclaimed philharmonic to make a similar impression on a 17-year old.
It is not just the shared high school experience that make older kids more memorably than younger ones. Some memories of one’s teenage peers may go beyond the physical propinquity of high school. A kid may remember someone younger or older having nothing to do with attending the same school. The connection could be neighborhood, religion, ethnicity or family affiliation — friend or relative. Rather than school, the connection could be made at the country club or in clog dancing class. Friends or acquaintances so formed may attend the same high school, but the bind comes from elsewhere.
It doesn’t matter. The point still holds. Whatever makes another person memorable, in the formative years, older is much more likely to stun than younger.
With the internet, it is relatively easy to anonymously track down anyone you like. It is easier if you are looking for Sigismund Schluffenmacher rather than William Smith. I was curious about how the students I thought so impressive in the late 1950s did in their subsequent life. I found a stunning junior (referencing my freshman year), perceived by me to be sophisticated well beyond her years, married a prominent wall streeter who ended up in the Obama cabinet. She held prestigious positions in New York City. A class member of hers was changed and later convicted of massive medicare fraud; I believe he remains incarcerated. A senior was a jock with a stand-offish manner and mean demeanor. Turned into a well-known professor of philosophy. A junior won an academy award. Many of the others – I found a dozen or more – became lawyers or doctors or achieved some position respectable enough for an upper-middle class aspirant.
As for the classes which followed mine? I have hardly a clue. This is largely because I can’t remember them. I have no one to look up. I am sure the members of the Classes on 1957, 1958 and 1959 are no more memorable than the Classes of 1961, 1962 and 1963. Just not for me.