Personal Essay: The Drainpipe
For a half hour, every school day, for a few months, I was
really happy. A
friend and I would go to the drainpipe, and we would sit, talk,
eat our lunches,
and listen to my walkman. It was the perfect place: It was quiet,
beautiful, and
it was full of peace. It didn't matter whether it was cold or
hot, somehow you
didn't feel anything sitting on that drainpipe. You would feel
the wind on your
face, and it made your face cold, but inside, you felt warm and
cozy, and you
almost felt like you couldn't be harmed. There was something
magical about the
drainpipe. Maybe it was the fact that nobody was around except
the two of us,
and we were tiny compared to the long grass surrounding us. Then
again, it could
just been the freedom of knowing that we were listening to the
walkman that was
banned from school, and we weren't getting caught. What ever it
was, it doesn't
matter because analyzing something takes away the feeling it
gives when you
think about it. It was just a great place, and it made me happy,
and I don't
know why. That makes it better in a way, just knowing that it had
that power.
Everyday, I would meet with a friend at the drain-pipe. That
is until a
teacher found us and told us that because we didn't have any
adult supervision,
we couldn't eat there anymore. It felt terrible. I wanted to stay
there. I had
always thought that adult supervision was outdated by the time we
were this old.
We had come to this place to get away from adults and all the
other P.C. people
in this world, and now we had to join them again. At lunch time,
I wander now,
using the tape player in any open classroom and get into
screaming matches with
people, it's all just little kid fun anyway. Lunchtime isn't the
same anymore. I
wish the teacher had never found us.
Even to this day, I go to the drainpipe. When things get to
hard at home,
and I need to just escape, I make the excuse that I forgot a book
at school and
I leave. I cross the soccer field, then the gym, sometimes stop
at my locker to
put away my backpack, and I run to the drainpipe. I lay down in
the grass, and
think about what ever is bothering me right now. I put my
headphones in my ears
and blast the tape that is in my walkman. I'm transported.
. Personal Essay: The Drainpipe
For a half hour, every school day, for a few months,