Dear Diary,

I remember the excitement of wondering what our high school class gift would be. We dreamed of things such as a new score board or a large sign in front of the school. So what was our gift--a boulder. Yes you heard me correctly, our class gift was a boulder. When you stop laughing, I’ll tell you the story.

It all started a long time ago; oh goodness, I’m aging myself. Actually, we were assisted by the previous class. Their gift was a large sign spelling out our mascot’s name of LAKERS in large concrete letters in the football field. At least, that was their intention. What they actually left was a large border, a completed “L”, the letter “A” poured and drying in the wooden frame and the “K” outlined in wood. It seems that they ran out of money. They also ran out of money before paying off their yearbook class pictures, but that's another story.

Anyway, homecoming was approaching and the entire student body was waiting for the gift to be finished. Unfortunately all we had was this large “LAK” in one end of the football field. I wonder why we weren’t happy to be known as the “LAK” school?

The administration gave us Seniors a choice of either finishing the gift or leaving it alone. We really wanted a third choice of tearing it out, but one class can’t destroy another classes’ gift. We agreed to finish it if the Juniors paid half (after all, the gift would benefit the entire school and the Sophomores didn’t have any money yet--the Freshmen were still at the junior high school). The Juniors agreed that making us pay the entire bill wasn't fair and reluctently agreed to help. Unfortunately, the administration had this weird idea that as the senior class made the bill, then only the senior class should pay the bill. It didn’t matter that they were talking about two different senior classes. Now what kind of stupid logic was that?

Well we were too embarrassed to leave that “LAK” in the field, so we decided to finish it. And since that meant that we wouldn’t have enough money to buy a decent gift for ourselves, we’d split the gift. Actually, we were going to take top billing as we were paying more than half of the cost. Unfortunately, one class couldn’t take credit for another classes’ gift, so we were stuck again.

We only had $78 at the end of the year, but we refused to be the only class in the history of the school to not leave a gift--hence the boulder. Well, it was either a rock or a $78 gift certificate, which one would you choose? Actually, we didn’t even have enough money to buy a boulder. Our class officers had to give the quarry owner a sob story to get him to lower the price. (I really think that he gave in to get rid of them. Having teenagers pleading and sobbing on your lot is not good for business.)

The final humiliation was having to tell the school about the gift. When the announcement was made, the entire Junior class stood up, turned toward us and laughed. We could only sit there thinking, “What? Is this some sort of joke?” This situation was against all tradition, Seniors are supposed to rule the school. Now instead of ruling the school, we just wanted to be underneath it. The officers tried to make the boulder sound exciting, but how do you build up excitement for a rock? The harder they tried, the more the Juniors howled. And the more we Seniors tried to sink into the floor. So tell me, what was your class gift?

PS. The boulder only ended up costing $75, so our class gift was really a boulder and a $3 gift certificate from an office supply store. Well, it was either that or a $3 check. At least a gift certificate has a little more class (no pun intended). Besides, it could always be used to buy some pencils.