destruction!

[phosfate]

TW blood

I just heard the greatest high school destruction story!

Was in the kitchenette making coffee while [REDACTED] was heating up her lunch, and we were talking about school stuff. I told her about the time I broke all the windows with paint. She said:

"Oh, I have one like that! I was friends with one of the [VERY VERY FAMOUS WEALTHY LOCAL FAMILY] kids, and had to meet him at his house so somebody else could pick us up to go do something. It was the middle of winter, and they had a glass front door.* Well it was the 70s, so I was wearing the cowboy boots like we did."**

I nodded. I'd been there.

"Anyway, my hands were full and I couldn't ring the bell, so I knocked on the door with one of my boots. The glass was so cold that it completely shattered. So my friend comes to answer and sees this and his folks are out of town. This was before cell phones so there was no way to call them.*** So he says Well...come on in I guess. I say I'm really, really sorry, and put my stuff down. The whole front level of the house is done in thick white shag carpeting. I ask if I can use the bathroom. I do. I come back and there's a massive trail of blood because I was cut by the glass and didn't notice. The house looks like a murder scene. The poor kid has no idea what to do and his folks won't be back for days."

"I am so proud of you," I told her.




*This would have been the outer door. Most suburban houses had an outer door that was glass or a screen to let the light and air in the two days every year it was below 80F and above -20F.

**A pair of Fry cowboy boots was a suburban white high school kid wardrobe requirement in our town for about three years. I didn't care, I was sneakers or die, but my sister wanted a pair and Mom wanted to give us shoes because my sister was going through some shit, and I think also was hoping to get me out of sneakers. That was when I learned I can't walk in fucking cowboy boots but Mom, God love her, made me take them anyway. I still got sneakers and I gave the boots an honest try.

***Our parents didn't know where we were every minute of the day, and

Comments

[chalcedony]

"I told her about the time I broke all the windows with paint." Really? Please, do tell.

[phosfate]

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.

[spiralsheep]

Now that's what I call an art installation.

[phosfate]

It would have been genius if it had been in any way deliberate. Instead it was more like the time my own bicycle fell on me and gave me a concussion.

[bentleywg]

You're my hero

[phosfate]

I think the completely and utter lack of guilt and the sheer amount of (hidden) pride was eye-opening. "I should feel bad about this but honestly I think it's fucking hilarious and I may actually hate this place." Given the opportunity to go back in time, Peggy Sue Got Married style, I would quietly encourage everyone to lay the black paint on super thick and be sure to get to school earlier the next day for a better view. With a camera.