Before the jukebox blows a fuse.
Well everbody's hoppin',
Well everbody's hoppin',
Everybody's boppin',
Boppin' at the High School Hop.
This week, I met an old high school classmate; I hadn’t seen
him since we graduated almost seven years ago. The guys in my class (it was an
all-boys school for a long time, and my class was the last all-boys class) were a
rowdy, strange, and not particularly mature group of dudes. It was a surprise,
then, to meet my classmate: self-aware, sober, in the middle of helping someone
he cared about, no longer his high school self. The pleasant thing was, it was
as if this is who had always been all along, and it just took a few more years,
some exposure to life outside of high school, to let it show. I wonder if that's how I seemed to him.
***
Meeting this classmate reminded me of an incident, late in
my high school career, when my classmates demonstrated their character to the
fullest—at least, their character at the time.
Our school was (and, to my understanding, still is) a shabby, somewhat desperate
place, continually struggling to get the funds to pay for teachers, staff, and
upkeep. It’s a private school, so they charge tuition, of course, but the
school’s search for money doesn’t stop there. There’s activity fees, and annual
fundraisers like raffles and a walkathon. But, most frustratingly, there’s the
bookstore.
My high school did not provide you with anything you needed
for class for free. If you wanted, say, a textbook, you bought it at the
bookstore. And yes, that textbook lost 80% of its value immediately upon
purchase; you could sell it back to the bookstore, but it was hardly worth it. The worst injustice teachers didn’t even give you
scantron forms to take your multiple choice tests on; you had to buy them at
the bookstore, or risk failing the test.
Naturally, this situation created some resentment within the student body.
To make matters worse, when you visited the school
bookstore, you had to deal with the man who ran the bookstore. This man was
late middle age, kind of heavy-looking. He had a combover and big, coke bottle
glasses. And he was a bitter, angry person who did not like you, or,
apparently, anyone. Who can say why he was bitter and angry and did not like
you? Perhaps it was because everyone he met was angry at having to come to the
bookstore. Perhaps he was angry because he was middle aged and had a combover, and that's just no fun. But the main point is, this guy was a jerk.
Now, the hallways at my high school were divided by
class—you had the freshman hallway, the sophomore hallway, and so forth. One
day in the senior hallway between class, someone started to mouth off about the
bookstore guy. It was unfair that we had to buy our own scantrons, sure, but it
was extra frustrating that this guy was such a jerk to us. Who was he, anyway?
No one knew his name. So we collectively decided to call him, “Pete.” I never found out if there was a reason for this choice; thereafter, the bookstore guy was Pete, and that was that. Not long
after, someone wrote a short song in celebration of Pete. The
lyrics went like this:
Pete, the bookstore guy,
Pete, the bookstore guy,
Pete, the bookstore guy,
Pete, the bookstore guy.
We were a creative bunch in the senior hallway.
As the year went on, the sound of Pete, the bookstore guy ringing through the senior hallway became
more and more common. We would chant it between classes to each other, glorying
in the weirdness of this bitter man whose identity was unknown and, in our way, releasing energy but also building and expressing our frustration about the bookstore and our experience at the school. Sometimes someone
would rap over the background chorus of Pete,
the bookstore guy, expounding on Pete’s made-up life and existence, or just
editorializing on life at the school in general. It became the senior class
theme song, even surpassing our already very creative “Oh-five-WHAT?
Oh-five-WHAT?” chant, referring to our graduation year, 2005.
Time passed, and the end of the year loomed large. The
seniors were on their way out, finishing classes with final exams and getting
ready for graduation. We were restless.
One day, the song finally made its way out of the senior hallway. A senior, passing
by the bookstore downstairs, casually chanted it to himself (pete the bookstore guy); a moment later,
someone else picked it up and chanted it along with him (Pete, the bookstore guy); gradually, more and more seniors gathered and chanted and whooped and laughed and soon there was a howling, jumping,
agitated mass of high school seniors outside the bookstore, all yelling at the
top of their lungs PETE, THE BOOKSTORE GUY; PETE, THE BOOKSTORE GUY; PETE, THE BOOKSTORE GUY; PETE, THE BOOKSTORE GUY.
The bookstore guy was furious: his name was not Pete. Onlookers were amused: someone was finally doing something, however trivial, about the injustice that was the bookstore and its operator. And suddenly, a teacher appeared around the corner, and all the seniors dispersed, not wishing to endanger their graduation with a suspension.
The bookstore guy was furious: his name was not Pete. Onlookers were amused: someone was finally doing something, however trivial, about the injustice that was the bookstore and its operator. And suddenly, a teacher appeared around the corner, and all the seniors dispersed, not wishing to endanger their graduation with a suspension.
That was the last time any of us sang the song, and it was
the last time any of us needed to. We had made our point.
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