Okay. Every February our high school does/did Spirit Week, which was a competition between all the classes to see who had the most spirit. *eyeroll* So pep rally skits, t-shirts, etc. Anyway, I got roped into doing window design. It was a 60s building with HUGE glass windows, and each class got assigned a section to paint. (It was a mixture of tempera and that horrible grainy bathroom soap, so it cleaned off fairly easily.) It being the beginning of 1978, we did Star Wars for our theme. Part of our territory was the Glass Hallway, which was a hallway between two sections of the building with a patio on one side (the lunchroom was after that) and the north lawn on the other. I thought, Hey guys, let's paint the windows black with spaceships and leave holes to make starlight, it could look cool when the sun shines through.
It actually did look cool, for about 15 minutes.
The morning after we painted, the temperature outside dropped to, like, -10. But the sun came up and was super bright. As I'm sure you know, dark colors absorb heat while transparent things generally do not. And the indoor heat was on. So the black paint absorbed sunlight from the outside and heat from the inside. So As the sun rose, a battle began between the increasingly warm black paint and the absolutely freezing panes of glass.
On my way to my first class at 8:00, I noticed a crack through one of the windowpanes. I didn't think much of it because kids throw stuff or fall over with an armful of massive textbooks, so something would break once or twice a year. Also mostly I was admiring my paint. It had turned out quite well.
On my way to my 9:00 class, the entire hallway had been blocked off with cones and safety tape, and there was broken glass everywhere. It took about half a second to figure out why. So basically I had accidentally instigated the greatest act of vandalism the school and ever seen. No one was punished for it because we weren't the Nebraska Institute for Occult Meteorological Manipulation. I don't think they even phoned our parents. I thought it was fucking hilarious because honestly I'm a bit evil.
Now, the weird thing was that we, the freshmen, actually won Spirit Week. This never happens. It's nearly always tossed to the seniors. But we had a combination of a finger on the cultural pulse theme (you may remember how badly Star Wars merchandising got fucked up, so much so that they couldn't even get action figures out for Christmas, and people were dying for SW shit) and massive, massive vandalism. So I think even the metalheads and stoners bothered to vote for us.
As far as I'm concerned, it was the greatest moment of my academic career.
The glass hallway was later painted over with weatherproof paint, and now it's solid brick.
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Date: 2023-03-15 08:10 pm (UTC)It actually did look cool, for about 15 minutes.
The morning after we painted, the temperature outside dropped to, like, -10. But the sun came up and was super bright. As I'm sure you know, dark colors absorb heat while transparent things generally do not. And the indoor heat was on. So the black paint absorbed sunlight from the outside and heat from the inside. So As the sun rose, a battle began between the increasingly warm black paint and the absolutely freezing panes of glass.
On my way to my first class at 8:00, I noticed a crack through one of the windowpanes. I didn't think much of it because kids throw stuff or fall over with an armful of massive textbooks, so something would break once or twice a year. Also mostly I was admiring my paint. It had turned out quite well.
On my way to my 9:00 class, the entire hallway had been blocked off with cones and safety tape, and there was broken glass everywhere. It took about half a second to figure out why. So basically I had accidentally instigated the greatest act of vandalism the school and ever seen. No one was punished for it because we weren't the Nebraska Institute for Occult Meteorological Manipulation. I don't think they even phoned our parents. I thought it was fucking hilarious because honestly I'm a bit evil.
Now, the weird thing was that we, the freshmen, actually won Spirit Week. This never happens. It's nearly always tossed to the seniors. But we had a combination of a finger on the cultural pulse theme (you may remember how badly Star Wars merchandising got fucked up, so much so that they couldn't even get action figures out for Christmas, and people were dying for SW shit) and massive, massive vandalism. So I think even the metalheads and stoners bothered to vote for us.
As far as I'm concerned, it was the greatest moment of my academic career.
The glass hallway was later painted over with weatherproof paint, and now it's solid brick.