A
small, carpeted room, packed full of sweaty bodies of every age imaginable; a
whirring, all-seeing eye peering down from above; a collection of people you
once thought you’d never see again sitting on the floor and bellowing such
nonsense as”Wahhhhhh” and “Ooga ooga”….
This
may all sound like the description of some cult-like ritual taking place in
smoke-filled chamber far below the earth, but in fact I’m describing an annual ritual that occurs right within the
walls of our school: Get-Back Day.
Every
year, on the day before Thanksgiving, we show how thankful we are by gathering
together friends old and new, remembering those we’ve lost, and…singing about car horns.
As
an outsider to this tradition, it can seem a little cultish. I say outsider, but this was
actually my fifth year experiencing the phenomenon. Perhaps it is because five
years is relatively short compared to the eighteen-plus years “lifers” and
long-time alums could have sat through the assembly.
But
don’t take this the wrong way — it’s
like, good cultish. There’s such a sense of community evident in the tradition,
a connection between current and ex MV students, from four to eighty-four.
As
one recent alum put it: “It’s a great chance for alums to come
back and revisit their Maumee Valley experience and each other. Get Back day is
very sweet.”
Another
part of the Thanksgiving Eve traditions, the brunch with seniors and recent
graduates, is one that I can give a behind-the-scenes exclusive look at. I
know, oooooh and ahhhhhh and away, because here comes the juicy stuff.
Except
not really. Unless you count the juice they served at the brunch. It, too, is a
very pleasant and community-oriented event.
To
start, it was great to mingle with and greet many of the seniors from last year
who we’d gotten to know well through
classes, sports, theatre, speech and whatever else.
Then,
when the adults left the room and shut the doors behind them, the two classes -
high school senior and college freshman - got the chance to candidly discuss the
“real matters” of life at college. It truly was a useful
discussion, made even better by the lack of teachers and other adults in the
room.
And
of course, there’s the free food. (Chocolate-filled
croissants, guys. I mean, if you ever wondered how to make a croissant even
better — chocolate. Chocolate is the answer.)
As
for the perspective of the graduates on this event…I went to one particularly out-spoken MV alum and college
freshman to find out.
“Coming back for get back day is amazing,” said the alum. “For the lifers, it’s like returning to a
family tradition and seeing all your relatives. But even for non-lifers, the
chance to have most of your class gathered one last time is something you don’t
want to miss. It’s fun to see how everyone has changed and what college has
been like for your classmates. That may be the last time that many of us gather
together until later high school reunions.”
We
have strange traditions at MV, it’s
true. But there’s nothing wrong with that. The traditions are part of what
makes our school unique, and although for us outsiders it can take a year or
five to settle into the rhythm of MV’s signature weirdness, once we do, I think
we can appreciate as well as any lifer that our school is something we should
be thankful
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