Apple cores and rancid milk (8th Avenue)
Writing in Augmented Space
< Play audio
Script
As you make your way down Highway 12, you better not blink. [sfx: traffic on highway] This is downtown Howard Lake, consisting of basically that closed antique store, gas station, rundown bar, and funeral home you see along the roadside. That grocery store on the left just opened up this year, so after five years, the town finally has a place to buy food.
If you take a couple turns off the highway,you’ll run into the now Howard Lake Middle School. [sfx: traffic on highway] Park your car right there on the side of 8th Avenue, and make your way to the front doors, standing just to the right of that blue handicap sign posted on the wall. The brick building in front of you was once the town’s high school. I walked by the birch tree on your left every morning as I ran toward the building to make it to class in time. [sfx: sound of running on pavement]
I still remember pulling my family’s old ’88 Chevy pickup into that parking lot far off to your left for school every day. [sfx: sound of a loud truck in background] Back then, the parking lot wasn’t paved, the courtyard didn’t look so green and lively, and most of those picnic tables were broken. I jumped out of that big ol’ truck and walked up the sidewalk on your left, past all the dying shrubs, and through those brown doors in front of you. Feel the cold metal door handles as you pull open the front doors. Now, make your way into the school. [sfx: sound of slamming doors]
I can still picture what I’d see next. [sfx: hallway noises in background] I walked down that hallway to your right and found my friends chatting and finishing breakfast by our lockers. Walk down that hallway and up that ramp. [sfx: sound of footsteps] Walk through a second set of doors. That first yellow locker on your right was mine for two years. It still looks as dented and paint chipped as it did years ago.
“Hey Jules, did you finish the Bio homework?” my best friend Jackie asked as I walked up to my locker on a typical day. I moved the padlock on my locker until I had gotten the right code and then threw my backpack inside. As I handed her my notes, the bell would ring. [sfx: sound of bell ringing] I slammed that locker door shut, and the sound echoed through the hallway you’re standing in. [sfx: sound of slamming locker]
As kids hurried off to class, they simply dropped the core of their apple or the wrapper of their Pop Tart right on the floor. As you may have noticed while walking around, this school is pretty much a dump. Hence the reason a new high school was built four years ago. The hallway that you are standing in was filled with chatty kids, and the floors were covered in rotten fruit and cartons of rancid milk. You may want to watch where you step as you make your way back down the hall to the front doors.
You might be disgusted by this, thinking, ‘what town would allow their kids to go to school in such a shit hole’? Did that though ever cross our minds? Yeah, but we didn’t mind. The building might be a dump in your book, but for us, it was all we knew. We didn’t need a fancy school with shiny lockers or even clean floors to be satisfied. We were content in knowing that the building would always be there, day after day, for us to find a familiar face. It didn’t matter that there was food decomposing on the floor. All that mattered to us was the knowledge that we were in a familiar place, happy to be surrounded by friends.
As you make your way through those front doors and back to your car, think about the little things in your life that you have found happiness in. [sfx: sound of footsteps] Swing your car around the block and onto Highway 6, and head out of town.