I dreamt that for some reason, I had to go back to high school. I was walking up through the back staircase and I knew I was late for homeroom. Usually this didn’t matter, since I was an editor in the newspaper homeroom, but at the beginning of the year, all students are in generic homerooms.
So I tore through the hall, not even knowing where I was supposed to go. As I ran past my old math teacher, Mr. Griesbach, he yelled out, “Room 33!”
I went down the second floor hallway around some bends, thinking about old teachers who had now left. Mr. Steckel, the computer teacher. My old counselor, Mr. Hickey. I got to Room 33 and it was filled with grade schoolers. Presiding was the irascible Irish English teacher, Mr. Kearney.
“That’s not the right room,” I thought and turned back down the hallway. My friend Mark came running in from the main staircase.
“Hey, where do we go?” I asked, forgetting that Mark was a friend from college, not high school.
“In here,” he said, ducking into room 77.7.
Inside were a bunch of unfamiliar kids and they looked pretty young. We were seated on the floor, and some other people from college were there. We started talking, even though announcements were going on and then Mark starting scat singing like he used to do in improv.
The teacher tried to quiet him down, but the kids were all enraptured. Mark sang about how college would change them all, especially getting rid of their homophobia (in an all male school, we were all a little scared of the guy next to us coming out, not because we were uncomfortable with our sexuality, but because we didn’t want the school to live up to the jeers from other schools).
I wish I could be paid
to dress up
and look good
After the song was over, the teacher sat there, stunned. Mark said, “You’ve been a great audience! Rutabagas and apples, everyone.” Then silence.
I looked at the clock and saw that there were still 2 minutes left in the period. He’d been hoping to be saved by the bell, but he was a hair too early.
The teacher came over to give demerits but then all of us on the floor started singing. It was a song about high school and how it’d turned us into us.
We… are the men
Who fight with honor
And would give
an arm
For… our brother
A raucous, rowdy song, that got all the kids and the teacher and all of us up and punching the air.
Then the alarm went off.