i love school, part 3 of 5

my memories for high school seem more compartmentalized than the previous years, yes, even more than my jr. high experiences. i think it was because i wore so many different "hats", as it is called. with cheerleading, youth group, work, school, internship, and whatever else was going on, i tried to live my life as one person but that was difficult.

okay, highschool was obviously filled with many different smells. the two that stick out are woodchips and the vinyl of the wrestling mats where we had cheer practice. i attended northridge high school. i changed from lca so i could try out for cheerleading. (i made it with a roundoff backhandspring - which is no longer good enough at northrigde.)

anyway, back to the woodchips. there was a planter, yes a giant planter complete with trees, in the corner of the commons. we (different people every year) ate lunch there most every day. sophomore year matthew t ate with us - or we ate with him. i always remember he seemed to never take his backpack off. junior and senior year was about the same people - chris s., lindsay, and sometimes lisa or andrea. i remember learning about boxing from chris and being called the "nice" cheerleader by people i talked with while they were walking by. so that will transition nicely to cheerleading practice.

for some reason (maybe they didn't have a good plan when they built the school) the cheerleaders didn't have their own space. because of that, we had to practice in the wrestling room - upstairs next to the weight room and joining the dance room. every a day, we had fourth period and it continued until 5:00. after us the wrestling team would practice. they sometimes didn't clean very well and a few girls got ringworm - gross, yes, but at least i didn't get it. the whole room was one giant mat with circles for their practicing. it smelled like the old exercise mat at my grandma's cabin - but not many of you know what that smells like. it smelled like vinyl like the machines at any gym. a few memories: the windows were so tall, we had to do an extension (stunting, two people high) to open them - very risky sometimes. i got injured at least three times that were memorable one was a major black eye my senior year. i always enjoyed our round of jumps - even though they were hard - because someone would always comment on my toetouches! - in a good way

i have many memories of that building - like the fact that the bathrooms off the stage were nicer than any others in the building, the doors close automatically when the power goes off - which is very scary if you are standing in between two of the large hallway doors during class time, the commons now looks different (no more planter) than it did. i know because i attended church there a couple of times, yes, a church meets in the commons area. i have only been back there twice - for the church and when sarah tried out for cheerleading (she could do a back tuck, i think, and was beat out by 5 girls her age that could do fullbacktwists.)

so, did you enjoy high school? for the most part? i did. what smells do you remember?