Special Ingredients: Remolding Clay

No, I didn’t find religion. I’ve finally realized I can never go back to high school.

If there’s one concept that keeps poking its head out of the ground, begging to be hammered back in, it’s my borderline unhealthy love of my high school years. As life slowly shovels on the layers of responsibility, I find myself pining for those good ol’ days of high school, where my responsibilities consisted of showing up at school, getting my homework done, and not drowning idiots in the boys’ bathroom toilets, each one of those more difficult than the last. I knew I had a good thing going there, and I never wanted to leave.

Unfortunately, once you graduate from high school, standard policy dictates that you aren’t allowed to come back again. This is what college is for, a sort of rehabilitation center for fledging adults who have had a school abuse problem for the last thirteen years or so of their lives and need integration into normal society. I myself spent over four years on the entry-level integration (two-year college) before I was released into society as an employee of audiovisual services of that college, so it’s pretty much a case of the nuts being left in charge of the nuthouse.

Yet I still find myself drifting fondly back to those high school days, whether I wander into a place I hadn’t been since or start talking about the past with old friends. Bryan Adam’s “Summer of ‘69” is a pretty strong drug that causes flashbacks to those days, even though I never got within cruiser missile distance of getting laid in high school. Okay, that’s not true at all after Senior prom, but before then, I could have sworn the Virgin Mary and I would have a lot in common in one important area. Actually, she probably got further along sooner than I did, so bad example.

Whenever I hear that nostalgic song (which, by the way, I first acknowledged its existence at a strip club I went to a year or so back, so it’s not like it’s been haunting me that long), I sort of slump my head in agreement with the sentiment of things changing, seemingly for the worse, old friendships fading away, and life in general becoming a lot less fun.

For years, that little psychotic part of my brain that would normally be reserved for wives in abusive relationships who think it’ll get better on its own or repentant drug addicts who believe they’ll kick the habit starting tomorrow cultivated a false hope that I would one day be able to return to the way things were if I just waded through the crap I was going through at the moment. As if I was part of some extremist religion, I believed if I just waited out the suffering, I would be rewarded with my eternal bliss of roaming those halls again.

If people were honest with themselves, they would admit this thought has entered their mind at least a handful of times in their lives, even if they haven’t even hit thirty yet. Unless they’re one of those unfortunates who had a generally bad experience, most people who say they hated high school are either idiots trying to sound knowledgeable, or they just didn’t know how to enjoy the ride. Now they’re struggling against the grind, hair count falling and blood pressure rising, because they wanted to grow up too fast.

One of my friends and the girl who almost became my first girlfriend made it her life mission to grow up as quickly as possible. She dated at the age of ten, got her learner’s permit as soon as she could so she could get behind the wheel, and generally tried to be a grown-up as quickly as she could manage. Now she’s stuck in a house she doesn’t like, struggling to make that next payment while trying not to go insane from the many things that nag her as she continues to recover from a terrible car accident that almost killed her, reconciles her mother’s deteriorating mental condition, and deals with the loss of her parents’ house to a fire that took with it most of her childhood mementos. I’m not saying if she was more relaxed in high school none of this would have happened, but I’ll bet there are times she wishes she could go back and get away from the adulthood she desperately sought.

Of course, good or bad, you can never go back to high school, or any point in your past, which perhaps makes it sweeter than it was. Looking through a rose-colored lens back at past is the ultimate level of human curiosity, because we get the bittersweet disconnection from reality that’s impossible in the present without the murky uncertainty of the future. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Despite this, I know for certain I had a great time in high school, despite all of the pointless drama and turmoil that comes with the territory, the sort of human play we found out years later was a complete waste of time and effort. For the longest time, my greatest wish was to be called up and told I had to come back to high school for a few classes. I wanted some official unfinished business, because I wasn’t done having fun, and that wasn’t a valid excuse for sticking around. I’ve had a couple of dreams about this, haunted by the idea that former glories were waiting for me just a few miles from my house.

The beginning of the end of this, however, came to me, as so many life-altering experiences do, in the form of a garage sale.

On the Saturday of the eighth, my alma mater, Clay High School, was hosting a garage sale, and I was immediately attracted to it. It was more for the sale than the location, mind you, but I was also looking forward to seeing the old school again. Because it’s located a few miles towards the boonies, I never have any reason to drive down there. The last time I went by it was a couple of years ago after dark to check out a Clay-themed ice cream parlor that turned out to be overpriced and mediocre, so there wasn’t any reason to frequent the area. I knew the school was being remodeled and I had seen some of the construction a while back, but for some reason I never really gave it much thought.

A bad snowstorm hit that day, cancelling dozens of events, but not school, because the storm had mercilessly come on a Saturday. As far as I knew, the sale was still on, so Christy and I made our way towards the school. Because of some smallish direction signs and her general level of nervousness about the weather, we missed the entrance and drove in front of the main building, which I gazed up at in horror and confusion and shouted “What the hell happened here?!”

The old Clay that I used to know had a main building which was tucked away back from the road and was mostly a one-story building with a second story in the back. What stood before me was a massive hunk of building positioned several feet from the road. The look of the building was much more modern, cleaner, and more professional, and therefore I hated it.

This was the first indication that something was terribly wrong.

We eventually drove in where we were supposed to and went down the right driveway. During this time, I noticed the building which once served as the elementary school and was converted into another building for the campus well before my time had completely vanished. This wasn’t very shocking to me, because the building had the feel of an old orphanage from the late nineteenth century, and it was mostly for the bad and/or dumb kids, so I never had classes in there and never spent much time inside, except to visit friends who fell into this category. Still, it was unsettling to see it gone.

After parking in the side lot by the stadium, I realized I didn’t know where this sale was exactly. Fortunately for me, nothing much seemed to have changed in the back. Everything looked about right (save for the elementary building), especially the stadium, which was remodeled while I was at Clay, so I was already used to the change.

With the help of woman who was also lost, we figured out the sale was in the cafeteria. We wandered into the back of the cafeteria as boxes of stuff was being loaded in a Salvation Army truck, which confused and frightened me. As it turns out, the storm caused the SA to decide to pick up the unsold items from the sale an hour and a half before it was supposed to end, essentially jipping late comers like myself. As a saw a box full of random toys make there way into the truck for processing and distribution to filthy SAs around the area, I felt a tear welling up.

Then I realized where I was, and the shock was enough to make any emotion melt into the floor. The normally colorful-yet-distinctly-old cafeteria was replaced with a drab, white, and impersonal food depot, with everything completely moved around. The dark little corner I used to hang out from time to time was now part of the main drag, and the stereotypical cafeteria line was now more akin to a full-service restaurant. While this may have been an improvement for the students, it depressed me thoroughly, because I had a lot of great memories in that cafeteria, most of them involving hanging out with friends.

What, you thought it was about the food? What kind of distasteful fat joke is that?

Okay, I did like the food a lot…

The cafeteria was the place where I used to hang out with C and another buddy, Bob, allowing us to get a half hour of socializing in, a feast compared to the petty snack the five minutes in the hall allowed us.

It was here, during a study hall, Bob and I were almost punished after we burst out laughing as a result of one of those stupid little ideas we came up with was brought to light. Bob presented me with a McDonald’s hamburger toy he brought with him for no apparent reason, and I, using my incredibly shrewd brain, twisted two pieces of gum wrapper up and stuck it in the cracks of the toy, giving it antennas and creating the kind of absurdity that indecently fondled my funny bone. I couldn’t say if it was the randomness or the context of the setting, but the uncontrollable fits of laughter that resulted created one of those memories you wouldn’t trade a million dollars for.

Through the non-hamburger alien study halls, I managed to get a lot of work done, meaning I read a lot of Dave Barry articles, usually printed fresh from the library, or found some other way to kill the school day. I could only have imagined how much I could have accomplished if I had a laptop then, though the strict study hall monitor would have probably snatched that away before the Windows ME operating system could have a chance to crash. This place also housed my strike against the egos of the upper classmen, as detailed in this article. You could say the cafeteria was a key location for my psychological and social maturation.

Plus, the food was damn good.

We escaped from the mutilated cafeteria and into the main entryway, which served as the proverbial fire as it registered that this too had mutated into a different lifeform entirely. This place used to be the main entrance, but now it stretched out into what once was the semi-circle drive into the new part of the school. This actually saddened me as well, because I remember how the sun would light up the hallway with its brilliance, shining beacon of light that pointed to the way out of school, with the buses only quick run away. I shudder to think how many times I would have missed the bus if this new addition was there when I was plodding down the halls.

The next emotional devastation came when I passed the place where the library used to be, replaced now by some sort of lounge which was a third the size of a classroom compared to the massive library. The rest of the library probably now served as the kitchen, perversely cramming two of my hangouts into one infernal entity.

It should probably shock no one that a nerd like me would hang out in the library, but it wasn’t for the reasons you would think. The library was a standard school library, with painfully out-of-date informational books, works of fiction no one would read unless scrapped for a book to use as a basis for a book report, and your standard cranky librarian, all wrapped up in a worn-out room that smelled of old print.

I spent a lot of time in there once they established a solid computer lab, wildling away what time I could writing, usually my personal projects. I would also print off as many archived Dave Barry articles as I could, much to the distain of the librarian, who I usually ignored in an uncharacteristic direct challenge to authority (she really wasn’t that bad, but she had her moments). The library served as a place for me to refine my craft and kill some time in a semi-productive way. Otherwise, I had little use for it, and actually dreaded it during those times teachers would drag us in there for a lecture on how to do research, the kind of boring homily they seemed to give every year, and then force us to stay for a week researching a topic we didn’t care about.

It was after passing by the old library that I noticed something incredibly familiar that filled me with some odd since of pride: a nameplate. During my Senior year, I was part of the first Visual Communications class, a digital design course that took up three periods a day and was probably the best class ever despite the idiots and the teacher, Quigg, who didn’t like me because my interests didn’t fall into the category of athletics.

The class was talking about creating a standardized nameplate for the all of classrooms and faculty offices, and wouldn’t you know, we actually did it. To me, this was a real accomplishment, having something we as a class did becoming part of the entire school. Truthfully, I don’t think I did a thing with that project, but still, pride by association.

I passed by what one could call the main restrooms, because they were in the main hall and saw a lot of traffic. I ran in just to make sure they were intact, and was glad to find they still had that run-down charm. The only improvement was they put doors back on the stalls. For the longest time, this bathroom was one of the few that had a single stall with a door. The rumor was administration was trying to prevent vandalism or other evil activities, but I think they were just too cheap to replace the doors or some key administrator had some unsettling fetish. The girls were allowed shower curtains to protect their privacy, because who cares about the boys? Sexism at its most accepted.

It was here Christy, who had been mocking me for my nostalgic fits up until that point, started getting sentimental, not about the curtain-clad restrooms, but about a classroom. She noticed the room where her old humanities class (a cluster of classes held for the snobby smart kids) was moved to a different room. This small change made her reflect how the rest of the world was changing too, and it caused her to stop for a second and think life is really moving on. So yeah, I’m lamenting over the changes of the entire campus, and it takes one classroom to set her off.

I don’t have too many stories about humanities because I wasn’t smart enough (or stupid enough; it was how you looked at it) to volunteer to take on the workload, and their comfortable chairs they were provided wasn’t incentive enough to take the plunge. One time I offhandedly remarked to a friend how all the humanities students do is sit there in their cushy chairs and do nothing. The humanities teacher, a Vietnam veteran and the type of angry middle-aged man who not-so-secretly wanted to beat a student or two to death with a textbook, stomped out into the hallway and demanded to know what I said about his program. I sheepishly replied “ I said they sit in their cushy chairs all day and do work.” and scampered off into the nearest mouse hole as the irritated, middle-aged cat stared at the back of my head, deciding whether or not to crush my skull with his fangs.

Christy also mentioned she missed a certain teacher. While I was quick to lightheartedly make fun of her while at the same time wanting to deck this guy for attracting the slightest bit of affection from my girl (I’m a guy, what do you expect?), with almost no irony whatsoever, I started moaning about how I missed having classes with my English and history teacher, Mister Cooney.

Cooney was the kind of laidback-yet-astute person any good parent would want teaching their kids. He sometimes tiptoed over that politically nervous line parents drew in the ground, but it was always meant to cause a dangerous chain reaction that would cause students to think on their own.

The odd thing was, I can’t remember a specific useful thing Mister Cooney taught me outside of how to format a paper, and I barely ever use that nowadays since I only write on the site now, and even that is a rarity as of late. I guess he was just a good influence, the kind of guy I wanted to grow up to be, a man with who was smart, yet had patience and a witty sense of humor. I’ve at least got one of those down, at least when I ‘m feeling like being funny.

Next it was time for the main hall, which actually didn't change too much. They were still in the process of installing the drop ceiling, and there were other minor signs of construction in progress, leaving the hallway in a pretty sorry state. I’d hate to have to go to school in a place that looked like someone had tried to blow it up with only partial success. I followed the split in the hall down to the place that where I spent my Freshman year enduring a daily deathmatch: the Tech Prep room.

It was the room of legends, something I covered briefly in my twenty-five-year retrospective and later in its own article. Everyday, I would walk down that hall and into the murky dungeon that lead to the Tech Prep room, fearful of what torments awaited me that day, courtesy of the primitive race of semi-humans that made up the class who were known as Tech Prepians. After I was out of the program, they converted over to a dental classroom, and I felt a small victory, as if I had beaten them.

With the construction, the hallway to the old Tech Prep room was open. I decided I had to check it out, so I slowly crept up, started down the hall, and was suddenly sucked in to another wacky adventure where I had to defeat hordes of Tech Prepians and other idiots in order to stop the plans of my evil aunt Esther.

No, those days are through. Instead, I found the hallway was blocked off pretty early in, so I couldn’t venture far in. It’s just as well. Who knows what dark forces were waiting for me to come back into their lair after years of being blissfully unexposed to vast concentrations of idiocy, and therefore no longer prepared for them?

I tell you, this is the stuff high school was made of. At least for me.

We slipped upstairs and had more of a look around. It was at this point I noticed they installed an elevator, which caused an amused chuckle to escape. Back when I started high school, I was warned by a friend not to buy an elevator pass from any Senior who offered one. Seeing an elevator installed in the school was like having some vague irony nailed to wall.

If you still don’t get the joke, there were never any elevators at Clay before.

We continued our journey down the hall towards the gym, another one of those sacred places. Besides the fact that I liked gym class most of the time (one of those exceptions was when they forced us to run the track, something they were kidding themselves about with me, or forced us to use the hideously archaic weight machines, which were rusted and worn to a point I’m surprised they didn’t somehow take health away through regular use), the gym also played host to most of the school dances, one of those socially awkward events wherein the cool kids showed up because they were cool and the uncool kids showed up because they didn’t want to seem any uncooler, The only ones who didn’t show up were the people who were too cool for dances (an influence that extended about three centimeters from wherever they were standing) and the hyper-religious.

I was one of the uncool kids (big shock there), and I would routinely go with C, though I did defy all odds and went with a few girls, but one of those was a life-changing experience (as chronicled in Band Girl), one was insulting (it was with the girl who the C’s story Sara Jane was based off of), and one was a revenge date (C’s old girlfriend). About the only girl that didn’t end up tormenting me after I took her to a dance I ended up proposing to, but I’m sure the torment is a’comin’.

Yet I have good memories of the dances, doing the kinds of things where I have no idea what I was thinking back then. It was kind of neat to brave the organic terrain that was the dance. The rules stated that various groups divided off to their own tables or clusters, where they would remain the entire night, and you had to be a real loser not to have your own (I played this part on occasion). The dance floor was pretty much fatal if you were fool enough to go in there without a partner; going solo would put you at risk of being bumped and ground to death by couples competing for space, even though there was usually plenty. The hallway was neutral ground, and provided a pleasant respite from the collective monster that was the dance.

My crowning achievements at these functions topped off with tricking the DJ into playing my Japanese CD (Sonya Wonderland, track ten) on a few occasions and dancing with a hot girl I had a crush on for years (she’s in the Army now, but that’s no excuse for brushing me off! Call me, Lindsey!). Yep, those were the best things to come from those… oh yeah! I took my fiancée to some of those! Of course I didn’t forget you, Christy! Ha ha!

I noticed the hallway was now a lot longer than it used to be. It turns out they extended the building far out towards the parking lot, taking over the space that used to be a long walk which served as the place to scope out who was showing up at school dances. At least that was how I used it. I never had a car in high school, but I imagine this walk used to be the site of many a stampede after school as students trampled each other to get to their cars so they could do their sacred duty and contribute to parking lot congestion and wait around while honking at each other. I imagine a few hardcores are still out there blaring away after all these years.

What distressed me was the courtyard in which the marching band would emerge for practices and football games was now blocked off. While I don’t claim to have enjoyed my time in the band, there are still some warm associations with the time, and seeing one of the paths I used to take four days a week on some occasions was a bit of an eye-opener.

It was perhaps because I was moved by this that I decided we had to check out the band room immediately to see what perversions awaited us. Along the way, we noticed construction noise coming from the auditorium across from the gym. We didn’t check it out, because Christy didn’t want to get caught snooping around, and nothing of much significance happened to me in there. I saw a few plays because Christy was in them (I remember being annoyed one time because she didn’t mention me in her biography in the playbill even though I took her to a number of practices; she claims this was not her fault) and a couple of assemblies they made us go to. Perhaps the most thrilling thing I ever did in there was sneak away with Christy and grope her for about thirty seconds before skittering out of there, big man on campus.

The sad thing is, if someone caught us and word got around, my popularity would have probably been ratchet up a few notches. I would be expelled and possibly arrested for sexually molesting a minor, but I would have had my fifteen minutes.

As we made our way to the band room, I found relief in the lack of change in the hallways. When we got to the instrument storage room, I discovered the door was inexplicitly opened, exposing thousands of dollars of instruments to theft with nothing to protect them but a few cheap pad locks. The irony was the damn door was usually locked and made it harder to sneak in when we were running late for practice.

The band room itself, however, was locked, keeping its renovation status hidden until I become one of “those guys” and hang around the high school well into my forties, trying to fit in with the scene.

This probably raises the question: if I didn’t like band, why do I have such affection for the band room? I’ve covered my exploits in the band in a previous article, taking great care in impressing upon my readers how lousy the experience was, so why would I want to take a peek at the secret club house where I was imprisoned for so many after school afternoons?

For as much as I dislike the band, the room served as a great hangout for my friends, even the non-band ones, and sadly some of my non-friends as well. It was the kind of place where we could meet and goof off during breaks without arousing any suspicion of committing evil, because it was a well-trafficked area. Even my non-band friends bonded to our little corner by the large instrument lockers, even though the band director would occasionally shoo them out because they were part of the unwashed commoners.

We continued on to the Visual Communications room located in the nearby annex building. I took up V-Com during the program’s first year and my last at Clay. It seemed like the best way to spend three class periods was to play on the computer, which I did frequently. More importantly, I learned a lot of skills that I directly apply to my job today. At least during the times when I’m not surfing eBay for cheap anime or writing articles for my personal website.

I mentioned the nameplates we designed (that I didn’t have much of a part in). V-Com also provided other opportunities for students to get their work out there. In the beginning of the year, we had to design flyers for a Sweetest Day flower sale, and this marked the first time I did page layout for something that was put out into the world. It was actually not good as you can well imagine, and I faced great ridicule from my fellow classmates for my slogan “Can you say ai, ai, ai?” The reason behind this slogan was my anime devotion was peaking at the time, so I designed a flyer with an anime girl on it and used that as my theme, with “ai” meaning “love” in Japanese. Hey, I thought it was clever at the time.

We also had to do a promotional video for a regional contest with the premise of promoting our school. I remember being one of two people working on the video editing itself, the other being kid named Anthony, who was in my opinion, as well as the opinion of just about every other student, the superior video editor and Quigg's golden boy.

My video was simply a series of clips of some of the interesting things Clay had to offer with some transitions thrown in that I thought were neat because I just started using Adobe Premiere and I was easily impressed by clock wipes. The constraint on this video was we couldn’t put in music, and this annoyed me because I couldn’t get a decent flow going, so I used the ADV Film promotion music from the late nineties as background music to sync up to and cut it out for the submitted video. When we got the video back, I discovered the reason behind the music restriction was the production company inserted a looping, generic track of sappy music in to accompany all of the videos, most of which consisted of editing jobs done with a VHS camcorder featuring elementary school students shouting at the camera in a way that’s supposed to translate into cute. It’s safe to say we blew them out of the water.

It was because of V-Com that I got roped into the Business Professionals of America, an organization that encourages high school students to become greedy corporate CEOs. At least that’s what it seems like. If you sneak into a state-level event (it takes Jonin-level ninja skills, but it’s worth it), you’ll see a sea of suits with the heads of high school students sticking out of them, drowning in the tides of adulthood. While most of them are probably just there because their teachers made them go, there are some hardcore members who wanted to be officers of the organization, and I imagine they are presently on their way to becoming important executives who are stealing your money while avoiding paying taxes.

The part of the BPA I was involved in was a contest which was opened to various skills. I chose extemporaneous speech, because I loved writing and it seemed like it would be pretty easy for me, because we were given a topic at the contest and had to write on it within a short time limit, so there was no homework involved going in. I came to find out that they might has well have called it extemporaneous BSing, because it was pretty easy to come up with something that sounded good without knowing what the hell you were talking about.

I aced the regionals, which was a stiff competition against one girl who didn’t want to be there. I moved on to the state level, which was held in a nice hotel in Columbus. We made the three and a half hour trip in Quigg’s mid-sized car with three kids wedged in the backseat, two, including myself, were not skinny by most definitions. Meanwhile, the mid-sized golden boy rode up front with Quigg because, I think this was really the excuse, his legs were too long for the backseat.

By the way, Anthony was a really good guy and I'm not really ripping on him. Quigg, however, is another story, and it would become clear his attention lavishing was a fickle and cruel mistress.

[Fun Post-Modern Fact: I formed suspicions at the Ohayocon 2009 anime convention that this BPA contest was held at the same place as the anime convention. This is based on the fact Christy and I stopped at a mediocre pizza parlor I hit up when I was at two different BPA events, and I calculated based on the distance and the fact I think that convention center is the only one around there that the two events had to be in the same place. Guess which one I would have rather been at.]

When we arrived at our hotel, we had to endure climbing ten stories worth of stairs because one of the elevators was broken, leaving three left to service a couple thousand impatient high school students. Couple this with a multi-block jaunt to get something decent to eat, and I was able to kill a mile and a half of walking without feeling it for a while.

I ended up taking fifth place in the state competition, not enough to move on to nationals, which, as you can imagine, was a devastating blow to my hopes and dreams of stealing your money. I did get a nifty medal and the temporary adoration of Quigg, who took his fastidious gaze off of his previous favorite and fixed it on me for giving him the glory of being in my proximity.

I felt kind of bad about the whole thing, because Anthony, who had entered another, more popular category, didn’t even place, and he was visibly pissed off about it. I’m sure Quigg’s fair weather mentoring washed away what was left of his pride. The final breakwater collapse was I didn’t really care at all about the contest, but I guess that’s why I did so well in extemporaneous BS. In retrospect, I think my empathy is what got me. If I had just gone the entire way and didn’t care whether or not Anthony hurled himself off of the top of the hotel because of his failure, I could have at least placed third. Not caring about the competition was simply not enough apathy to win it.

Back to Clay. It was at this point Christy and I noticed a lot of activity going on in the annex, which was scheduled for demolition. Apparently, there was an auction going on for the junk they decided not to save, like ancient TVs and tetanus-inducing metal cabinets that didn’t close all the way. It was clear they wanted to scrape a few dimes together before they wiped out the entire building and built another on its foundation. Considering the annex was one of the original school buildings and looked the part, it’s hard to really blame the school board for wanting to give students a modern learning facility.

We walked around the mostly-bare building, only the oldest and most useless items left to be sold for pocket change. I noted there was a lot of graffiti in the rooms, and I had the feeling this was allowed by teachers because the building was going to be destroyed anyway, so they might as well let the little hellions get their vandalistic urges out of their systems. This is something like I would imagine a condemned building would look like on the inside, only nicer and with the electricity still on.

It was a stark contrast to the annex I remembered: a building packed with students hurriedly rushing to their lockers in an effort to get to class on time or people chatting outside their classrooms, braving the tardy bell for a few more seconds of precious socialization. The signs of a normal high school life. Now the building was stripped clean, nearly abandoned, and counting its days until demolition.

I imagine just about every student had classes in the annex, so it should go without saying that I have quite a few memories in this building. I spent the prime of my teenage years in this building struggling through most of my math classes, especially geometry, which I’m convinced to this day is not so much a form of math as it is some infernal interpretative art derived from the darkest regions of Hell.

I had a science class containing one of the most non-existent and unremarkable teachers I have ever encountered, a poor soul who would experience harassment by students which included being befuddled by the sounds of pencils being shaved off by the fans of the ridiculously obsolete computers (several dozen steps behind the clunkers provided by Tech Prep) and staring in confusion as the TV turned itself on and off, a prank executed by a poltergeist in the form of a student who used an infrared texting device These trinkets were popular in the mid-nineties, before cell phones and texting became mainstream. Most of them doubled as a universal remote to control TVs, although I have my doubts manufacturers intended for them to used for a prank I have to concede was a clever way to play a trick on teachers. The poor guy never did catch on.

I suffered through my two years of minimally-required foreign language in the annex. I chose French, based on the fact I was forced into both French and Spanish in middle school, and I managed to get an A in the former, so I figured French was the ticket down Easy Street, though I’m sure I would have been met with some ridicule had I been going to Clay during those heady months when Americans were eating “freedom fries.” It should go without saying French was one of the classes I dreaded stepping into, because I’m American and I’m incapable of learning other languages, because I’m not one of those folks with a mental disability that prods them to learn and understand languages other than English. The only times I didn’t regret French class was when I got to watch part of Akira on Bomb Day (this day was real and legendary. Check out the article on it here) and I spotted a marquee for Akira in a picture contained in my French book. So basically my only enjoyment in French class had Japanese references.

One of those urban legend-like stories also occurred in this building, though my friends swear it happened because they were there. It involved an outcast named Brian, a creepy geek who would eventually grow up to be a child rapist. In addition to his other fine qualities, Brian had the ability to bring people to a state of near-death with his silent flatulence, a trait I experienced firsthand and can still smell on some stormy nights. Legend has it that Brian managed to clear out an entire science class as he remained inside, laughing his deformed head off. He apparently received a detention for this.

I know you stopped paying attention at “child rapist,” so go search out Brian’s story here.

We went downstairs to see the auctioneer in action. He was in the beauticians’ classroom (yes, we had one of those) selling off old structures, his little loudspeaker dangling from his aged frame. I’m not sure why he needed it, since he would be doing his thing in classrooms, and teachers never needed the aid of a loudspeaker even when high schoolers were involved, so a few mid-aged scrap collectors shouldn’t have posed much a threat in the quest of getting his point across.

Neither Christy nor I had ever been in that room before, so it was an interesting experience. I hung around for five minutes before deciding to leave, because it was going to take a while for him to get upstairs, and I didn’t want to wait three hours for the opportunity to bid on some rotting drop ceiling panels.

Before I left the annex, I noticed a single brick in the middle of the hallway. Wanting some scrap of Clay’s history, I grabbed it and we quickly made our way out of the building, in case the auctioneer was planning on putting the brick on the block and it turned out I was stealing it. As we went through the main entrance of the annex, I noticed a pile of doors lying on the floor. One of them had a cling-on sticker featuring the Clay logo pasted on the glass, so I ripped it off and took it with, marking another ill-begotten souvenir from our trip.

We walked down the hall connecting the annex to the front of the main building, which was a surreal experience because there was never a hallway there before, only a courtyard which students had to run through whenever the weather was bad. We found ourselves back by the cafeteria and decided to explore the front of the building a little more before taking off and never looking back.

I didn’t get any second-hand deals that day, but what I got was something more important. By forcibly taking away the old high school, I suddenly found the physical symbol of the best time of my life wasn’t there to beckon me back anymore.

There were times when I would daydream of someone calling me up and asking me to come work at Clay. This would prompt me to sever any life I had and accept the job, allowing me to go back to the place that I associate with some of my best times. This is not taking into consideration that I have no business working with children, especially high school girls whose tentative nubile status would be bound to cause all kinds of problems, legal, social, and marital.

Because of the renovation, my Clay only exists as a detached memory of my youth, when I had no real responsibility and each day had potential for all kinds of fun. While I’m probably romanticizing just a tad, the burden of the old Clay found ways of pressing down on me even though things are currently all right now. With the old school gone, I have no desire to go back and eek out some kind of awkward and socially-contemptible existence.

Now, I’m ready to grow up.

The only thing I regret is future students won’t be able to share my experience, but the glaring flaw in this logic is no one is going to share my experience. The students of today will make due with the construction and change and manage to get out of their experience what they would have in the old school or the finished product, just as students in the coming years will make of it what they will in their finished school, as will the students decades from now who will have their own unique experiences in the school that’s built on the rubble of the current Clay.

And there will be a neurotic person from every one of those generations who will just want to go back.