Up the back stairs
My high school was by my calculations large. After all, we had more than 1200 students; a small town in itself. We did everything there: mass, gym, cafeteria and sessions standing around by our lockers. It was our place. The only problem was that we had to, from time to time, write examinations that required a minimum of study. The school actually scheduled time for us to stay at home and crack the books. Some of us however, had better ideas. We could go to school, hang out with friends and study, assuming of course that we could find a quiet place to sit. Not in the classrooms and not in the cafeteria where people went to play cards and make noise; instead a small group of us discovered a stairwell leading to a machine room off the beaten track highly uncomfortable but it was our place. We kept it secret and at regular intervals we would go there to review all the material we thought might be on our exam papers. Important things like verb declension and obscure chemical formulas. Did you know that H2O makes water. Anyhow, I wonder who took our place when we left. No way to tell because the whole school has been demolished. It was a long time ago and for those that wonder; knowing how to decline a verb in Latin turned out to be inconsequential for my life. But back to the stairwell, we could be there for hours at a time as long as we remained quiet. The number of actual workers in the school could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They had no reason to go there. The school would ring its bells just like on an ordinary day so we knew when it was time to go home. Few of us had watches. Did I study much? No, I like most people of my generation, knew it all and besides no one ever failed. We could always promise to our parents that next semester would be better. We would study the next time round and the teachers were just glad to get us through at the end of June, so they could begin the next intake of minds and bodies. I wonder if any photos of our secret stairwell ever made it into a yearbook, probably not. The people who did yearbooks studied at home.
