Kay Braley found a mysterious letter when she purchased a Prince album at North Dallas Antique Mall.

Wylie native Kadence “Kay” Braley loves antiquing, and she enjoys visiting various antique malls around the metroplex. The 20-year-old is also a music lover and record collector, so she went looking for albums and cassettes this month at North Dallas Antique Mall near Forest and Marsh. She’s a self-described Prince fanatic, so when she found a copy of his Around the World in a Day record, she figured she’d hit the jackpot.

Inside the sleeve was a handwritten letter.

“It’s an original pressing from 1985,” says Braley, who waited until she got to the parking lot and climbed into her car to look inside. “To my surprise I found this letter.”

Apparently penned by a Lake Highlands High School senior that same year, the handwritten letter captures the sometimes poignant, sometimes frustrated, sometimes hopeful thoughts of a youngster on the brink of adulthood.

The letter, apparently penned by a 1985 alum of LHHS

Braley posted photos of the letter to the Lake Highlands High School Alumni Facebook page in hopes of identifying and connecting with its author.

“I thought it was a cool thing to find,” she told me. “I thought it would be interesting to see if I could find who wrote it.”

She wasn’t the only one. Members of the Facebook group were quickly invested, sharing their ideas about who he or she might be.

“This is a cool find,” wrote one alum from the LHHS Class of 1989. “No clue about who the author is, but from the context, I would surmise this was written by a male who didn’t much like school, but was smart enough to take a Physics class, maybe an honors student.”

“He wonders if he will be successful in the next 10 years, making me think more of a male perspective,” the alum continued. “At the end, he quotes a poem by Robert Frost, pensive and quirky. The handwriting looks like my mother’s, so that throws me off!”

Braley still hasn’t located the letter writer, so she’s hoping Advocate readers will solve the mystery. Give it a try:

Page 1, My last week in Highschool

With the coming of this excitement filled summer, I have almost completed my last year of high school. At this point nothing or no one will set me back, not that I would accuse anyone of such a feat, but that it is simply an overwhelming feeling to experience. I once heard someone say that, “Ya man, those high school days, yep those were the best!” And to think all this time I have been thinking these were the most miserable days of my life. But maybe, just maybe I developed that thought because everyone else did, and that is what I will miss about high school, following the crowd. The crowd, what a safe place. Everyone does what the crowd does or the majority does. As I sit in this Physics class writing this paper instead of doing the review for the exam, I wonder where my teacher got her brains, certainly not where I did. And as the year has gone past I have grown to survive in her class by being smarter than she is, which is not hard to do. Day in and half the day out I go to school to be taught something, but what? So after these twelve years I have decided that the reason we come to school is to learn how to learn. Learn how to learn to do our work, learn how to learn to follow directions, learn how to learn to be disciplined, and to learn how to learn that the life ahead of us will be long and difficult. Of course the school administration keeps this a secret and we school students must come up with our own ideas as to why we attend school. For some it just might be to gossip about the goodlooking guy or girl they see in the hall every day and for others it might be because parents make them. Speaking of teachers, as I did earlier, I heard in the news that within the next few years the demand for teachers in the job market will be greater than the supply, thus administrators will hire teachers with lower certification. But I didn’t know that we had good teachers.

But when I look back over this year, that seems short now but then was long, I don’t think about the crumby teachers or work or the bad dances, but I think of only the good times and the girls that I went out with and the girls I didn’t and the memories. These highschool days are through for kids my age but are well worth it. I often wonder what I will be like in ten years when the 1985 LAKE HIGHLANDS seniors meet for their ten year class reunion. Will I be proud of what I do, will I be rich, will I be poor, will I be happy? I know seniors often ask themselves the same questions and often these are not answered until those ten years pass.  OVER>

An additional page included a table with the student’s apparent review for the physics exam, plus a bonus.

The letter’s “B” side contained notes for the physics exam and a poem.

A poem written by a great American poet named Robert Frost more less sums up the meaning of high school.

The woods are lovely dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Then one possible clue: TONY DEAN SETH

If you were that contemplative teen, let us know at ctoler@advocatemag.com or in the Facebook comments section.