CODY SOSSAMON PUBLISHER Have you ever thought about how two people can see the exact same thing, yet have an entirely different take on it?

A football game, for instance.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been rehashing a football game the day after — a Monday morning quarterback, if you will — and I might be of the opinion it was a great game and that both teams played good. Others around the water cooler are of the exact opposite opinion.

Or consider witnesses to some crime. One describes the suspect as short, fat and bald and another will say he was tall and slender with long hair.

You probably experience something like this on a weekly basis.

No, no I don’t mean witnessing a crime and disagreeing on identifying the suspect. I mean probably at least once a week you and a friend, coworker or family member will disagree — or see in a different light — on some shared event. A meal, a movie, a person, a football game or maybe even a homecoming assembly.

Yes, a homecoming assembly. That’s how I got the idea for this column — listening to people talk about the GHS 2009 Homecoming assembly held last Friday morning.

Several people were astonished that so many students had babies at the assembly. As I was walking in to the school, I did see several young people — apparently students — carrying babies. I saw several more sitting in the gym with babies in arms.

But, to be honest, I didn’t really think too much about it. Maybe I thought the babies were younger brothers and sisters. My wife says I’m a bit naive at times.

Others I talked to did not mention the babies. They talked about the seeming lack of discipline among the students. “Did you see how they just wandered around and the teachers weren’t sitting with them?” one alum said. “And when it was over it was a madhouse! When we were in school, our teachers were right there with us and we filed out by class at the end of assemblies.”

I didn’t really notice that too much and actually thought the student body was pretty well behaved, as far as I could tell. But then, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the students. I was watching the show. And watching some of the older alums watch the show.

Some of the expressions on their faces were priceless.

But babies and behavior were not the memories I have of the homecoming assembly, which just for the record I thought was very well done EXCEPT for one thing.

It was a bit loud. But hey, I’m not going to complain. I don’t want to sound like an old fogy.

Old fogies think and act like senior citizens, regardless of their true age. They generally have stricter moral values than current generations — no matter what generation you’re comparing.

The times, they are a changin’. Not only did we file out of assemblies by class, but unwed mothers were few and far between and those few certainly did not bring their babies to school. Shoot, we couldn’t even wear shorts to school except one day a year. Even then, the shorts had to come to mid-knee. That was in 1969.

I’ll bet during the assembly for Homecoming 1969, the classes of 1929, ’39, and ’49 were as dumbfounded by what they saw and heard as we were Friday.

Somehow, we made it and I’ll venture to say the current crop of students will too.