"The world is but a canvas to the imagination." -HDT

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Good, The Bad, and The Bathroom

This past Monday, I thought it might be a good idea to face my "personal hell." What's my personal hell you ask? The high school band uniform room. Don't laugh, there's very good reason for that.  This is where I spent my darkest and most depressing days of high school. After not getting drum major my senior year of high school, I was handed the master key to the school and the position of band captain. I was also entitled the rights to the uniform room, although I had them 4 years before.

Most people would think having a master key to every door in the school would be the coolest thing in the world, and it was. Except my reasons were different. My reasons meant that all summer, mornings before jazz band, lunch breaks, and afternoons after school would be spent in this little room all by myself, no one to bother me and nothing to do except sew and listen to my music, just me, myself, and I, all alone on the other side of campus from everyone else.  However, you should know, our high school is separated into three parts:
1.) Main campus
2.) Comet Corner
3.) Zoo School located at the NC Zoo

The uniform room is located on the backend of Comet Corner, formally known as the trashy Sir Robert Motel (yep, only our high school would buy out a motel and turn it into classrooms.)
Senior year was not a good a year for me for reasons most of you already know.  I got mono in November and then was diagnosed with PCOS in December. It was not a good year for me at all, so I did what any depressed band kid would do. Trap myself in the uniform room.  And let me tell ya, looking back on my time spent in that uniform room, it really wasn't as great as I thought it would be.

****
So I decided, along with my father, that we were going to go work in the uniform room during band camp, since my brother is now in band. It seemed like a good plan... until I got there and was awkwardly ignored by an ex-boyfriend, got thrown into a pit of annoying freshman who got fresh with me (and I got fresh right back,) and stabbed myself with pins so many times, I could have drawn my own blood for my next doctor's appointment.

However on the upside, I had my dad, I had my old crew of band mom's, and I had my "Aunt" Rebecca.  You see, before Nate and MB, there was my best friend of 16 years, Nash. His mom is my "Aunt" Rebecca because we always referred to each other as family. Life with the Dunn family is crazy, especially when you put them with my family.

So when Billy handed the keys to Aunt Rebecca to use the bathroom, we decided to have ourselves a little adventure.
The bathroom key we were given was for the upstairs bathroom of Comet Corner. We did not realize there were no lights. We did not realize there would be spiders. And we did not realize we would be actually be breaking into this bathroom.
So after three times of trying to open the door, we finally forced the bathroom door open, she went in, I followed, at least that was until a huge spider landed on my foot. I jumped into the bathroom, letting go of the door, and freaking out trying to step on the spider. Then the door closes and it's pitch black, she starts screaming at me because she can't see where she's going since there are no lights, both of us at this point are running into walls and each other trying to find the door handle. Finally after getting past the spider webs, I pushed the door back open so there was some light in the bathroom and everything seemed fine... until we tried to leave and lock the door. That's when we realized that we had broken the lock when we tried to get in the first time. Aunt Rebecca tells me then to call my father and get him to come fix it, and of course as soon as he picks up the phone he says;
"what did you do now? and no I will not come in the girls bathroom."
but after insisting, we convinced him to come rescue us. And thankfully he was able to fix the lock (and also lock us inside the spider ridden, dark, bathroom in the process.)

After that chaos, all I have to say is that, it's always an adventure with us and I'm thankful we were able to have this adventure after a year apart. (and I'm thankful Homiller never found out about us breaking the lock to the bathroom.)
***

So in the end, some people want to face their fears and most of them will conquer them. I decided to face my fears and decided that there's very good reason it's a fear, and that it still remains my personal hell. But the way I see it, because of all those awful times in that uniform room, I've realized just how much I've grown, and if walls could talk, they would say the same thing. They would say things like, even times alone, there were still good times with Nash, Ally, Billy, and especially my Dad.There were lots of days filled with skipped classes in order to work in the uniform room, and lots of happy times when I was relieved to actually get away from it all.  If walls could talk they would say, life moves on, people pass through, but somethings never change, somewhere, someone appreciated the needle pricks, the shined up drillmasters, and the laughs that were brought to this room. Maybe my biggest fear, isn't the room itself, but the fact that this room holds so many memories, both good and bad, memories that we'll never get back.  But I guess that's the way it is.

What are four walls anyway, they're only what and who they contain. And that's how it will always be.

3 comments:

Michelle said...

From personal experience, I find it amazing how horrible high school was and how wonderful life after high school has been. My "uniform room" was the library, but same idea. Although, I never had a spider-ridden-bathroom experience. ;-)

Anya said...

hahahaha, I completely agree, post high school life is so much better. I guess we all have those places we hide, but you're lucky you never at the spider attack in the sketch bathroom haha

Annah said...

I never realized that the uniform room was more of a prison to you than an escape. I always figured that you thought it was nice to have some peace and quiet and de-stress. But it was totally the opposite.

I'm pretty sure the best memory from that room actually happened outside of it. Uniform rack racing, anyone?

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