A Bad Homecoming Habit, or Nun of Your Business

As a member of the student council in high school, I felt that we spent more time trying to build floats on boat trailers than we did fostering a democratic system of self governing. Though I had envisioned tackling school-wide issues such as getting Coke instead of Pepsi in the vending machines, I quickly became somewhat disenchanted with the program.

Despite the trivial nature of the work, I was lured back into service each year by a combination of power hunger and the need to affirm that I was well liked through a formal election process. I also got pretty good at giving speeches, so running for office was usually pretty fun.

The trivial nature of student government activity was remedied by the collective intelligence and sense of humor of my classmates. We quickly realized that the zeal for winning goofy homecoming week competitions displayed by the other grades wasn't quite our thing.


This gave birth to a sort of anti-competition campaign in which we tried to lose each event as ridiculously and wonderfully as possible. I won't even get into how the boys in the male cheerleading competition lost, but let's just say the plug was pulled on the music before the dance number ended due to behavior unbecoming of the institution.

We tried to start a movement to get the cleverly titled "Homecoming Week" changed to "Semana Spectacular," but that was squashed by the administration. We also tried to substitute the usual tricycle riding contest with an ultimate jousting competition in which students battled teachers while balancing above a giant kiddie pool filled with Aveno bath. We actually did get the jousting, but the Aveno bath was nixed.

Senior year was our coup de grace. Tired of building floats to drag like mules onto the football field at halftime while the athletes pointed and laughed, we decided to pick a class theme for the year that would minimize the amount of work and effort involved. That's how we chose to become the "Boat Trailer Seniors." The float would be completed before we had even started it. We could just drag one of the empty trailers onto the field. We even had t-shirts made with a poorly drawn boat trailer on it.

The problem was, we were too immature for our own immaturity. We began to modify the original idea, once beautiful in its simplicity. New concepts spun wildly out of control. The results were phenomenal.

The boat trailer, which was originally supposed to be dragged out by listless, apathetic seniors, was now slated to be pulled by monks to the 2001 Space Odyssey theme song. Then, pirates would come running and screaming from behind the big hill past the end zone, pillage and steal the trailer, and leave a trail of monk bodies in their wake.

As you can see above, not everyone got the pirate costumes just right.

The biggest problem was that the order of monk robes got mixed up and the costume company delivered nun habits. We adhered to the adage, "the show must go on," and carried out our plan. The last minute costume change exacerbated the the violence and offensiveness of the scene. (Note: most of the nuns were actually guys in habits, and a lot of the pirates were girls, so that seemed to help - and added to the humor, I think.)



The weirdest part was that we didn't come in last place. The seniors were pretty bummed and the administration never invited that year's panel of judges to return.

Since then, homecoming rules have been amended. I guess it's understandable.

Mon Pere. Tu Me Manques.

When I was in high school I thought everything was funny. Honestly, I think I just walked around for four years snorting and wheezing at just about any form of novel external stimulus.

A math teacher once dropped the eraser and made a little noise like "urp!" and I laughed so hard I choked on my own saliva and nearly hacked up a lung right there in the front row. And those serious National Honor Society inductions where we all had to act somber and stand in front of a crowd on the risers? Forget it.

I miss those days of life before I became an adult (of sorts).

Anyway, having the propensity to laugh despite situational appropriateness had its down side. Boy did it.

One day in the tenth grade, our French teacher took the class to the theater to see a production about international travel geared toward students learning French. They would do a scene in French and then repeat the scene in English. We all expected it to be trash, but it was actually a high class show. I thought it was pretty funny, how good the show was, so I was already feeling a bit goofy early on.

As fate would have it, I was seated with some friends in the front row on the left side of the stage. We were awfully close, but we were off to the side. Therefore, my stifled laughter wasn't going to be too much of a problem. At least not until they took one of the scenes, the serious graveyard scene, directly to the edge of the right side of the stage. This is where things went afoul.

Out of nowhere, this happy-go-lucky show of traveling young adult tourists took a detour for the dramatic. One of the characters got off the train in Normandy to visit the grave of his dead father. He kneeled in front of the grave, and consequently right in my face, and began speaking/crying to his dad. It basically looked like this:

I was doing ok holding it in until I heard just the slightest inhale-after-a-quiet-laugh from my friend sitting next to me. It was too much for me to handle.

Right there, in front of a theater full of teenagers, I laughed in the face of a man saying goodbye to his deceased father. Of course, this had the dreaded ripple effect, and soon the whole audience was having a good chuckle.

I looked up at the actor through by bleary eyes and felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. Not enough to be able to stop laughing, but guilt nonetheless. I then looked back at my French teacher.

I really did feel terrible. This laughter wasn't out of malice or disrespect. I knew better. I just couldn't do anything about it.

I freaking loved high school.