Back in the day….

They call me Old Fart. I’m a senior now: I’ve been around these parts for longer than most people can remember, almost half a decade I reckon. Back when I first travelled up here when the world was still black and white, things were much different: different for the better too! For one thing, back in my day we went to class in real classrooms! We didn’t have to do our learning in no secondhand trailers that smell like they were bought at the Goodwill. Also, when I was a youngin’ our lunchroom was one of the finest on this side of Cougar Mountain. It had nice low ceilings, some real paint on the walls in our school colors, and even a mural of the Patriot itself above the gym doors. Even though it’s mighty big, that new lunchroom is as barren and ugly as the inside of a fallout bunker. Every time I eat lunch nowadays, I feel like I’m eating inside a prison. At least prison has a nurse on duty every day. Also, what’s the deal with these dances nowadays?! I remember back in the day when people used to go and actually dance respectably at those things. Now they seem more like sweat-filled grind pits than dances, with hormone-fueled freshman rubbing themselves on each other like animals. The morals around this place seem to have disappeared along with the rest of the school building. But all of that rubbish aside, the worst thing to me is that it seems the ancient relationship between under and upper- classman is disappearing. Nowadays when I hobble through the halls, it’s not too often that I see people from those two groups intermingling. For some funny reason, I feel like it all has to do with underclassmen these days looking up more to Macklemore and his dead-animal coat than the people who have worked to give this school the reputation it has today. Maybe someday, respecting your upperclassmen will become the cool thing again, but until then all I can do is warm my butt in those spiffy portable saunas… I mean bathrooms.