By now, I didn’t think I’d be all that big on high school get-togethers. So what was it that recently made me swallow some Robitussin to keep my coughing at bay and endure the chilly night air to attend yet another Christmas dance organized by my high school classmates of nearly three decades ago?

I guess it’s because the older I get, the tougher it is for me to pass up the chance to treasure-hunt.

That’s what I find myself doing whenever I find myself at these yearly holiday gatherings. Those are the times when I get to mine for nuggets of memories from back in the day -- nuggets that the years have hammered into gold.

There were my former cheerleader buddies, Zalia and Regina, who forced me into not claiming the cold that was threatening to sap my fun by coaxing me to join them on the dance floor in doing the cha-cha slide. Their enthusiasm made me think of the days when one of the biggest worries I had was in making sure that I had mastered our cheerleading routines. I was a better gymnast than dancer, so I always risked being teased mercilessly for missing a step at the pep rally.

There was Monica and Joyce, who managed to find a second calling for their smarts and their worker-bee habits as the architects of our yearly dances and class reunions. There were the former football players and the perpetual jokesters, some a bit grayer and others a bit paunchier, but all of who managed to find something to love about their school decades after the Friday night lights had gone dark.

And absorbing it all made me think about how lucky we all were. Lucky because we lived long enough to see our high school days as times worthy of celebrating. Around my classmates, I got a respite from thinking about all the isms that black people have to confront. What I got instead was a profound sense of joy and normalcy.

I wonder how many of today’s black high school kids will be able to do the same.

Like many of today’s teenagers, we had our share of worries. Our school, Raines High School, a football powerhouse that was originally built as Jacksonville’s black model school, was grappling with the challenges of desegregation. We were also dealing with the other stuff that is part of the teenage experience; being teased or being ostracized by cliques, and being pressured to prove one’s worthiness by landing a guy or girl that filled the fantasies of others.

But most of us got through it all -- with help.

Many times, that help came from parents who helped us to keep our teenage angst in check and to understand that the prospect of being teased for wearing a knock-off brand of sneakers was not a crisis that warranted staying home or stealing. And if that help didn’t come from parents, it came from teachers and other caring adults who understood that most of our pain was growing pains. They nursed us through those pains with extra doses of guidance and confidence -- all of which prevented us from trying to deal with it in ways that would carry a body count or create other self-destructive habits.

For the most part, what they did for us worked. Despite any teen angst, most of us managed to find friendships, as well as a fit for our talents, our competencies and our dreams, in high school. It was an important part of our lives.

But for many kids today, things are different. Different because in many ways, the predominantly-black high schools such as the one that nurtured my classmates and me now serve neighborhoods of strangers. The teenagers who attend them are youths who move around a lot because their parents are following housing and jobs, and whose lives are more transient. They are besieged with high-stakes tests, and for many teenagers, both black and white, their lives are governed by issues that go beyond growing pains. The city of Boston, for example, recently unveiled a survey that revealed that nearly 90 percent of its public high school students had witnessed acts of violence, while almost a third said they had a family member killed violently.

But there was good news. Sixty-one percent said they felt hopeful about the future. To me, that means they’re not nihilistic, and that they want to graduate and go on with their lives. But I hope that in spite of it all the pain, they can find the space and the camaraderie that they need to overcome it -- and later find things to celebrate about high school.  

Because even if those years are filled with more challenges than fun, they still can come back and celebrate the fact that it was a challenge that they met and mastered. And to me, the high school years are too significant a chapter in a person’s life to find nothing valuable -- or for that matter, even salvageable -- to revel in.
 
A value that, for my classmates and me, shines like gold as the years wear on.