Fall in May

~12~ Lunch with Batgirl

"High school is a battlefield for your heart." ~ Angela Chase, MSCL

🦇🦇🦇

After I get my assigned gym locker, I drift out of the locker room, shrugging the smug off of Chad's hopeful hate face on the way out the door. Seeing I have no idea where I am going, I shadow along behind the straggling freshmeat flock towards the tree-lined quad.

A few of the braver freshmen are giving me sideways stares, obviously wondering "Who the hell are you weird dude? And why the hell is our crazy PE coach saying you kiss corpses? Is that like a thing in high school? Like that K thing in LGBTQIAPK?" But none of them are sure enough of themselves to actually risk speaking to the new weird kid for fear of retaliation.

The lunch bells ring and the flood of Falcons start flying out of the various buildings, out into the open quad and down towards the lunch shelter. I immediately spot my new bestie from English class, The Butcher Boy, as he lumbers alomg malevolently thru the open gates.

The Butcher is soon surrounded by a whole heard of swaggering jockstrap leatherheads. Followed closely by a coven of baby bunny fearleaders, all decked out in their cheery best. Bouncing up and down around the leatherheads like needy pound puppies begging for attention. By the looks of this particular pack of predators, I can only assume these must be the "popular pod peeps" that May was referring to this morning.  

There is something in the way they casually saunter along, as if lunch was waiting for them, and not the other way around. Like the timeless parade of dance macabre, they know their relevance in the world is at its apex. So they want their short season in the sun to last as long as possible.

The bright and shiny flock of Butchers Boys and Bouncing Bunnies turns away from the open air quad and head towards the shade at the far end of the exposed shelter. Where apparently the Butcher Boy holds court and consorts Fear for fun in the sun. With Butchy leading the way into the shade, it becomes quickly clear to me that the Seniors are the only ones "privileged" to eat in the open air quad, or off campus if they so choose. The rest of the rabble is delegated to stay under the shelter, where they belong.  

The long lunch shelter is pretty atypical of your standard ouutdoor high school eatery. With rows and rows of benches, between intermittent poles strategically placed to support a corrugated roof from protection from the elements above. Having a pole to lean back into seems like the prime spots for most of the coveted cliques. Wandering down the backside of the lunch shelter looking for May is an instant lesson in the pecking order of the Roost. While there is no assigned seating per se, there is most definitely a class system in play, and the classes are clearly divided into a hierarchy.  

Juniors get the back section closest to the shaded tree-lined quad. Sophomores are stuck in the middle, as they are in life, to keep the Freshmen in their place. The lowest of the low, the Freshmeat...are regulated to the end closest to the cafeteria. Where they can smell the most like old grease and fresh garbage. This of course, is clearly designed to ensure the social hierarchy of groupthink, bullying and jockeying for the best spots. By the looks of it, the jockstraps are very good at jockeying out the weak for the best spots next to the support poles.

Taking it all in, I note that the Class of 09' has taken credit for a moto mural painted along the wide central roof beam running down the center of the shelter. The art is childishly in comparison to the Wyland ocean murals I grew up with by the beach. A cartoonishly done Falcon with an angry glint in his eye, flying away into the horizon. Underneath the soaring raptor, a bannered moto runs down both sides of the beam.

"Fly falcons fly! High into the sky...to the future and beyond! Go Falcons!"  

To me, this moto motto message is hardly inspirational, more like a warning. Which I easily translate to: Yo Bro, this place sux rocks! So get gone as fast as you can before you die ...and never look back!