things i miss about high school: #3

The #3 thing I miss most about high school is...

Roll call in history. Me, my BFF, twin sister, and her BFF, were all in relatively immediate alphabetical order (there were a few people between "L" and "P" on the attendance sheet), giving us lots of opportunities to be creative for roll call. Usually, we would choose four-word phrases, each stating a word when our name was called, creating an entire sentence when taken together. The fact that our names weren't directly following each other made this process even more hilarious since roll call went something like this: "Here." "WE" "Here." "Here." "LOVE" "EATING" "Here." "CHEESE.". Even though our teacher PRETENDED to be annoyed when we would do this (he was doing a lot of swim/water polo coaching that year and was always stressed), I know it totally made his day. Well, it at least made him crack a smile.

All four of us had the teacher two separate times during high school, but our best roll call ever was senior year. He had a few strange promotional posters for a history textbook, with large facial images of prominent historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, with provocative questions underneath each face (Benjamin Franklin..."Player"?). Basically, the poster was attempting to incite students to use their textbooks with their intriguing catch-phrases for each Important Dead White Guy. I'm not sure who came up with the idea--it was probably my BFF K--but we took the poster, cut out four of the faces, taped them onto popsicle sticks to create makeshift masks, and then when roll was called we popped the mask up over our face and said the corresponding catch-phrase. I don't remember what historical leader I had, but I like to think when my name was called I replied, "Player?".