The Comfy Corner

When I was a senior in high school we had this little tradition called "senior prank." Every high school in the country has to deal with these shenanigans yearly and our high school was no exception. The only thing was, I was incredibly nerdy and deathly afraid of breaking the rules (surprised?). So me and my nerdy friends decided to play a prank that would help, rather than hinder our school. But, we would act the part and make it feel like we were doing something really naughty.

So midnight rolled around and all 7 of us showed up in a sketch black van (that's how I remember it, anways) at the high school dressed in black and armed with copious amounts of sidewalk chalk, shovels, spades and potted flowers. We went to the hill overlooking the fine arts building and we started to dig. We planted probably 50 plants in the shape of "'07." Then we got started with the sidewalk chalk. In artistically genius lettering we wrote "School Beautification" on the large expanse of gray sidewalk in front of the hill. We then drew flowers, hearts, and peace signs everywhere. And drew little arrows leading everyone to our hippie masterpiece. We snapped one pic (the set-it-on-a-trash-can-and-wait-for-the-flash kind) of all of the outlaws and then we escaped unnoticed.


I tossed and turned in my bed that night thinking of all the rules we probably broke and half considering going back to the school and digging up the plants. "At least," thought I, "the sidewalk chalk is not offensive or anything. It's actually quite beautiful." The next morning, bleary eyed but wide awake, I arrived at school and headed towards the fine arts building expecting to see a crowd of gawking spectators. Instead, I saw a lonely janitor with a garden hose, spraying away our sidewalk chalk masterpiece before anyone really had a chance to see it. This was the state of the arts in our country, I thought. One person just spraying away creativity and probably giving more thought to what he wanted for lunch. Once again, I felt the familiar feeling of heartbreak (it doesn't take much). They cared not one bit about all the plants we planted (they remained there the rest of the year) but they could not handle anything but mindnumbingly gray sidewalk lining the walls of the school. And that, my friends, is probably why I have committed my life to the arts. To bring that sidewalk chalk out of the drain and back onto the sidewalk where it belongs.