My time in the joint

Another one from the old site. This is my favorite. Living through it was another story.

All blogs post a list sooner or later. This is a list of things about my three years in the joint. You might know the joint by another name: High School.

The North Building was constructed in 1953.

The ceiling tiles in the hallways had a habit of hanging from the ceiling but not falling free.

One of the home economics teachers was a woman who was young and single. I always wondered what she did with her spare time. Mainly I wondered if she was having sex regularly.

One of the science teachers was very popular with the girls, and would show us pictures of his latest child. The girls loved him, but I couldn't stand that guy.

Some of the girls went to his house to paint the baby's room.

I painted my room all by myself. (Boo-Hoo-Hoo).

The student body consisted of one thousand three hundred and fifty kids.

I knocked down a ceiling tile. I meant to push it back up into the ceiling, but it fell to the floor instead.

A janitor saw me do it.

The following Monday, I was summoned to the vice principal'’s office. There he sat with another administrator. On his desk was the tile.

They played bad cop/ bad cop with me. I was very scared of being expelled. They asked me what would happen if every student did what I had done, and I thought to myself, you would have one thousand three hundred and fifty tiles lying on the floor.

I was sentenced to hard labor in the cafeteria for the next three days cleaning out the trash cans. This would give me a better appreciation for what the janitor had to do to make a living.

In my junior year I noticed that the sun rose, revolved once around Loraine Mercurio and set, and that was the end of another day.

The totalitarianist regime, I mean administration, played the same tactic with another student that they played on me.

Their tactic misfired a little bit. The young man got a can of gas and set the school on fire.

The fire burned down the gym, several hallways, the music room and damaged other rooms.

In all my years, it was the biggest fire I have ever seen.

At least three or four fire departments came to put out the fire, and it took them all day.

In over twenty years, I can still see the look on the principals face as he walked away from his burning school, and I smile. How about your one thousand three hundred and fifty tiles now, eh?

The kid got twenty years, and no one was harmed by the fire.

The southern building, condemedmed by the Fire Marshal and closed off, was in the process of being demolished. I was fascinated by the old building.

One rainy morning, around 3:00am I snuck into the old building and wandered around in its dark and silent hallways. It was a bit creepy, but I was enraptured by the place and its past. I found what looked like the chemistry lab. There were a lot of built-ins with glass doors and I thought it a shame that it was all going to be destroyed.

Our school was known as Clover Park High School and we were the Warriors.

While in the south building, I stole a set of the glass doors from the chemistry room. I still have them.

My last report card had a .25 GPA. That's point-two-five, or one quarter of one grade point.

Tags: Clover Park High, Clover Park High Class of 81, Clover Park High School