I recently had my 10-year high school reunion.
26 of us class of 2013 Richmond High School graduates sat around the park near where we all grew up with over a dozen yearbooks, talking about things that happened over our school years and laughing about some funny memories.
I thought I’d share a few of them here for you all to enjoy along with us
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When I was in high school, my senior year, I was in the theater arts class. One of the things we had to participate in was set-building, which I always loved.
I spent four years of high school with an electric drill and a paint brush, building various sets and transforming a dark stage covered in leftover glitter into a flower shop or a New York City Street. And Mr. Applegate (referred to as ‘Apple’ by the theater students) taught all of us little musical-loving teens about stretching a dollar by re-using set pieces, how to properly paint a wall, and how to take pride in working with what we had.
He also fired me from using a tape measure after I tried to measure a box to cut out of a wall and it was completely crooked. And he was fully justified in doing so, I’m bad at making a straight line.
But back to the story, our senior year we were painting a set. We had about a dozen gallons of gray paint to cover the industrial set and platform, and as we were getting set up for the day, one of the other students picked up a can to start shaking it.
She shook it gently, then looked at me and the others in the group and said “this doesn’t feel right.”
Apple saw this from further out in the house of the theater and strode up onto the stage, took the can from her, said “you really have to shake it” and gave it one good shake.
Turns out, the student was right, because the lid was not fully on the can. A fountain of gray paint came spilling out in a ring, all over Apple and the platform, narrowly missing all the students.
We all waited as he stood frozen, processing what had just happened in shock, before he shouted, “Someone go up in the costume loft and get me some pants!”
So for the rest of the day he had to wear yellow, plaid pants and had to recount why to all of the classes, including my AP English class later in the day.
Also, the floor of that platform set had a gray paint ring on it for the rest of the production.
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Our teachers in high school were quite a cast of characters. That included the AP government teacher, Dr. Ladd, who was so beloved by his students that they called themselves the ‘Laddiators’. He was mostly very jovial, he liked to joke and have fun even if he was a tough educator.
One day, he got very upset with his class for their rate of failure on a test he had administered, and after berating the class for not studying, he took a walk to calm down.
Me and the other students in normal government class got to hear it from a classroom away, and watched him storm down the hall towards the teacher’s lounge, home to the only vending machine with fully-sugared soda.
At that point our government teacher, Mr. Delore, took his cheerful self down the hall, poked his head into the AP Government classroom, and said to the silent students ,“Just so you know, we’re coloring in my government class.”
We were, it was his assignment of choice to ask us to draw and color something related to what we were learning about. Something about visually demonstrating a concept to better understand it. I didn’t mind because these were almost always partner projects, and Mr. Delore let me work by myself instead.
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I’m sure I’ll have more stories to tell from my high school years one day, but in honor of my ten year reunion, I just thought I’d share a few. I hope they made you laugh as much I do.