I went back to ACS (I) for drama night last night and at first I couldn’t see anyone I knew and I felt old, especially since I had to be ushered to the CPA by two council y5 girls who must have assumed that I was lost because my eyes were wandering like two coffee beans on crack from the astro turf, to the spiral staircase, to the parade square and back again greedily because all they saw before then were but mere memories. For the record we ran across the astro turf shouting like the mad yoofs we were after the performances to the car, jumped in and blasted Run to the Hills with six men in the back seat because we could. But I digress.
The first two plays bewildered me and threw me off guard because they were so un AC. The Spirit, which normally dances about the stage viciously during such performances was strangely stoic, and the stage lights seemed more like headlights to me as WTF popped into my mind so many times. At first I was afraid, I was petrified, so I breathed deeply and felt old.
But you can’t give up on your school. I wasn’t ready to. And I’m truly thankful for the third play, which rightly won GWH for SYF. It was a masterpiece. It was ACSquisite (har). In the words of an NS man, the dudes on stage ‘played everything that could be played’ and I loved it. So did Mr Chirnside, who I sat near to, and was incredibly happy to meet and talk to once again. The sweet sweet strains of the Anthem did no harm as well. I’m going for Band Night next week, and I can hardly wait.
But, but, but overall I felt like a spectre gliding down the empty, quiet, vaguely familar coridoors last night, seeing people and things that I once knew and was a part of but not anymore. And it struck me suddenly and sadly that I was in the school, but I was not of the school. The wind howled and I felt old, a flag under which I once marched billowing somewhere in the darkness of the night.
“I miss the vault.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We are rare.”
