Don’t drink, don’t smoke

What do you do?

 ~ Adam Ant

We were asked this many times, the students at South Shore Christian School, because despite some exceptions, for the most part, we didn’t drink, nor smoke (anything), nor even have The Sex. But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t get downright edgy. For example, there was the incident of my 7^th-grade-suspension over potato chips. There were also fires, spinning, and washing machines. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some more!

1. Man-E-Faces

We had a math teacher who was really awesome and a great teacher, but/so we liked to make fun of her. She could be moody, and waver from jokey to Serious Teacher to grumpy. But we always made fun of her to her face! And speaking of faces, one day Mary Kate brought in Man-E-Faces from Masters of the Universe. For those at home not as cool as me – okay fine, as cool as my brother Robb who schooled me on all the characters – Man-E-Faces, to quote Wiki Grayskull, has the ability “to change his face from his regular human face to that of a robot and a monster.” There is more, but that is all you need to know for the story. That, and you could switch the faces on his action figure, as well.

So yeah, one day Mary Kate brought in Man-E-Faces and just sat it quietly either on her desk or the empty one beside her, forget which. Either way, we were a very tiny class in a very tiny classroom, so obviously the teacher noticed Man-E-Faces sitting there, all human at the time. Mary Kate explained that it was to track the teacher’s mood swings, but because the teacher was all happy and still in human-face mode, she smirked, rolled her eyes, let it slide, and went on with class. At which point after several minutes, Mary Kate slowwwly reached over, never taking her eyes off the teacher, and switched Man-E-Faces to robot. After the teacher noticed this a few minutes later, she started laughing despite herself, so Man-E-Faces went back to human.

This went on IIRC for pretty much the whole year. The most exciting part was always when the teacher was grumpy or pissed at one of us and Mary Kate would switch Man-E-Faces to the monster – would the teacher laugh and restore the humanity, or would Mary Kate get detention?

2. The Dress of Doom

Speaking of aforementioned math teacher, Mary Kate’s BFF Dare took the reins for this glorious prank. Somewhere along the line, we as a class realized that there was a strong overlap between the days when we’d have tests in this class, and the days when the teacher would wear this one dress – a dark-teal floral dress. It was cute and looked very nice, but we started referring to it as The Dress of Doom, because of the test-day coincidence. At a certain point, the teacher awesomely started wearing it on purpose without fail if we had a test, and sometimes just to strike fear into our hearts because, hello pop quiz!

Pop quiz unpredictability aside, we were always warned ahead of time for tests. Now here are some things you need to know:

1)      Our math class was right after lunch.

2)      Our math teacher coached softball at lunch, at least on this particular day.

3)      Dare and Teacher were similar sizes.

All of which led to Dare’s convoluting a reason to IIRC borrow the teacher’s car keys? Either way, she got the dress out of Teacher’s car when Teacher was in softball-coaching gear. Dare wore the Dress of Doom to class, even taking down her hair to complete the look. I don’t remember much else about that day except that it was one of those laugh-till-your-stomach-hurts moments, especially when the teacher awesomely laughed harder than anyone.

3. The New Kid

In the beginning of my junior year, I was dating Chad, who was also friends with many of the people at SSCS, due to church groups, Campus Life, et al. I.e., everyone was psyched to see him in the high school hallway this one September day. Possibly Rosh Hashanah, as it would fit both the time and that he would have off when we did not, as he went to public school.

I honestly don’t remember how much of it was planned? What I do remember is that he was wearing the guys’ uniform – white button-down shirt with gray pants, and Mike lent him an extra tie from either his locker or the Lost & Found. After this, Chad looked every bit the part of SSCS student, so obviously, we went on the road! To…

…Spanish class! That was taught by a very sweet woman from Germany. Natch. And speaking of other countries, the start of 11^th grade had brought with it an awesome exchange student from Finland, and a kickass girl who’d moved from Argentina the year before. Along with a couple of other kids from various parts of Long Island, though I’m not sure if any of them were in my grade. Anyway point is, it really was not Mrs. Richter’s fault that she didn’t know Chad wasn’t really a new student, especially considering that we told her he was. New students were par for the course (no pun intended).

“iBienvenido, Chad!” she exclaimed with a smile that quickly turned into a frown when we students couldn’t help but laugh, though we were trying not to. She told us that we were being very rude to this nice young man, and not acting very Christianlike to laugh at him!

After some more back and forth, I think we mostly felt bad and admitted that Chad was not actually a student after all. But the whole shenanigan was awesome while it lasted.

4. The Taboo Buzzer

As I’ve mentioned, we had a lounge in our senior year, so obviously there were board games. Okay, Taboo doesn’t actually have a board, but it was our favorite. And at one point, it was discovered that the buzzer sounded exactly like the intercom buzzers that they used to have in classrooms, or maybe still do. With ours, if the teacher picked it up, it would automatically call the principal’s office.

So some of the people in our class started going around during periods off and hitting the Taboo buzzer right outside the classrooms, next to the where the intercom was. This led to a hilarious sequence of events wherein the teacher would pick up the intercom, thinking that the office was calling, when really the teacher was calling the office 😀  One day, poor Sultan – decidedly less of a troublemaker than most of the class, though full of mischievous spirit — got caught doing it. He received a detention, and our Taboo buzzer was confiscated.

More stories to come — please share yours! And as always, I especially am psyched for stories from fellow SSCS alumni, as well as corrections/clarifications to these if need be! Holler and shiver to the 20-year anniversary of graduating high school in 1993 ❤