Looking back on my time at East, I struggle to recollect too many happy moments. I remember late nights spent fudging procrastinated essays, bleary-eyed 10-hour tech rehearsals and kafkaesque dysinteractions with the school’s ever-shifting administration.
I remember losing my voice to a sore throat in the weeks leading up to the fall play back in 2019, standing out on Freshman Hill with my scene partner, screaming silently into the wind.
I remember (and how could I forget!) the chaos which consumed the school last spring. In the anarchic days which followed the infamous May 5 fight and lockdown, I remember watching a group of kids in the back of my study hall fashion a slapdash flamethrower from a can of deodorant and a lighter.
“It has been a week,” the email from the PTSA read that Sunday. “If you are feeling helpless, you are not alone.”
Some comfort. I may have been drowning, but at least everyone else was drowning with me.
Oh, how dearly I remember all the hollow gestures by all the cowardly leaders, all the superficial solutions to all the deep-seated issues and all the endless recommitments to a non-existent wish for better days.
Perhaps I’m a bit too hard on East and the poor people who have to hold it together, but this place has inflicted such misery on myself and so many others that I can’t help but form something of a negative opinion about the school.
Of course, I’m sure many of my fellow students have had a completely opposite experience from mine. Maybe there are even those who truly love East Chapel Hill High School. All I’m saying is that upon reflection, I can’t count myself among that number.
Yet now one happy memory does return to me. Last year, at the end of third quarter, I sat in the stairwell outside my Latin classroom in Upper Quad A, reveling with my fellow students in the simple joys of children’s toys.
While translating some lurid section of Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria,” we had come upon something truly wonderful, unveiled to us as if by some occult hand. Looking to cram in a last-minute story credit for my journalism class, I decided to interview my classmates Kevin Chen, Laney Hunt, Nadia Mansori and Clara Brodey about what had been discovered.
“We found little plastic kids’ toys, like you would probably get in a McDonald’s or something,” Hunt said at the time. “It was this paddle thing and it had beads attached to it, and if you spun it, or if you twisted it really fast, they would hit the thing and it would make a cool little noise.”
We also found another one of those, along with what Hunt called “an awesome ball-rocket-launcher thing.” We took turns with the toys, played ping pong with them and otherwise enjoyed ourselves throughout the period.
“I’ve never felt so enlightened, yet monkey at the same time,” Chen said. “I enjoyed it, obviously, but also in my head I was just going, ‘Oo oo ah ah.’”
Our Latin teacher, Jennifer Hoffman, also took part in the “kindergartenism,” playing with the toys and ultimately keeping the rocket launcher when the other two were put back.
Though the artifacts were gone the next day, the joy they had brought into our lives lingered. When Brodey suggested that she might bring in more “toddler toys” for the class, we became ecstatic.
“That would be the best thing that has ever happened to me in this school,” Hunt said. “I’m not even kidding.”
Indeed, we all agreed that time for this sort of simple pleasure had been tragically lacking in our high school experience.
“East is such a competitive place, you don’t have time to relax, or just have fun and enjoy yourself,” Mansori said.
“Everyone treats us like we’re all grown up,” Brodey added. “But really we’re just all kindergarteners at heart.”
This kindergartenism, I believe, is vital. If it weren’t for the occasional stolen moment of childish delight at an awesome ball-rocket-launcher thing or a literal log that someone had left in the bathroom, I don’t think I ever could have made it through these four long years.
One of my more melancholy pastimes, to briefly change the subject, is looking through old school newspaper articles. I’ve wasted countless hours browsing scanned editions of Grimsley High School’s centenarian student rag, losing myself in the youthful cares of the distant past.
In 1920, the GHS “High Life” declared its purpose—“to exert a strong influence in school life for the ‘highest’ things.” Then, through a world war, a space race, an internet age and all the century’s other adversities, it strove to maintain that commitment. How strange it is to witness the nation’s history from such a view, through the once-fresh eyes of long-aged youths.
The ECHO is a much younger paper, and generally of far less lofty aspirations. But reading through the digital archive of its 2010-2011 publication year, I’m struck by the same strange sense of melancholia.
While many of the old articles reveal truths about the school that have remained largely unchanged over the years (“Sleep deprivation pervades East’s academic culture” by Morganne Staring, for example), others paint a picture of a slightly different East.
This was still a school with troubles. The final post on the website from 2011, for instance, includes the ominous reminiscence, “Remember when Rex tackled that naked guy?”
But overall, looking at these old articles, there’s a palpable sense of stability that seems lacking nowadays. Looking back on his time at East, former scholarch Dave Thaden, whom student reporter Brie Broyles refers to as “the epitome of an awesome principal,” had the following to say about the era’s troublemakers:
“The students at East were great, even those that thought they needed to show the world they could cause trouble. They were still great.”
Maybe it’s just my own rose-tinted glasses talking, but this seemed like a truly happier time for our little school. And to circle back at last to my main point, I think it all comes down to the prevalence of kindergartenism.
This was a school year which saw the ECHO’s former advisor, Ms. Colletti, crowned the queen of something called the “Sweetheart Extravaganza” alongside civics teacher Brian Link. This was a year in which the school hosted a burrito bar, a stinky cheese night and a Custodial Appreciation Day.
There was also an annual event called Springfest, which would bring a halt to classes for one day in April, bringing “fun and enlightening special classes,” “mesmerizing musical performances by students and professionals” and “delicious food catered by vendors” to the school. It was like last year’s Wellness Wednesday, only far grander.
In these halcyon days, romance blossomed too, as “for East’s fencing team, swords and masks seem[ed] as effective an aphrodisiac as a love potion.” Quoth one fencer: “When people ask me where I get my bruises, I say my boyfriend.”
Perhaps this wasn’t a time for the “highest” things, but it certainly was a time of soaring kindergartenism.
Above, I said I wanted to be excluded from the number of those who truly love our school. But, in all honesty, I can’t bring myself to fully forswear my feelings for East. In my four-odd years trapped in this place, I’ve developed an undeniable connection with it.
I’ve covered its many sordid happenings for the newspaper. I’ve been in a slew of its theatrical productions. I even went to one of its football games this fall. However toxic my relationship with the school may be, I can’t say it’s not real.
I do care for this licentious lyceum, for better or for worse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than eager to be leaving it forever in June, but I do hope that someday, after I’m gone, it will undergo some measure of repristination.
With a redolent sprinkling of kindergartenism amidst the daily fetor of East, maybe we can start that healing process sooner rather than later.
Photo courtesy of Jamie Emmerman/The 2010-2011 ECHO
