Lockers

One of the most frightening things to me about high school, one of the things I was most uncertain about, was the rows of lockers; rows that lined the halls up and down on either end. There were so many and they represented so many people:

Keeners, nerds, bullies, preps, weirdoes, slackers, jocks, the popular kids.

I always wondered what category I fit into.

I was never stuffed into a locker; sometimes though I’d look in and wonder if I could escape through… like the kids and the wardrobe in that story about the lion and the witch.

But could I really do that? Could I crawl through?

In our school days all that I wanted to do was graduate and leave those lockers behind, to escape those hallways filled with cliques, groups, socials. So full of people, yet feeling so empty at times… trying to fit in wasn’t easy for me.

The locker was like a personal shrine to so many, filled with pictures and books and anything else one desired to place inside. Anything that made us cool. But it was only math, science, and English literature for me. Boring. 

No stickers, no logos, no pictures ripped from magazines.

Did this say something about me??

Damn those tricky combinations! Was it six to the left three times, four to the right twice, and nine back? Can someone give me a hacksaw to open this damn thing? I’m supposed to be getting an education, I have to remember my combo and try to fit in with the cool crowd? 

The locker, can I climb in and avoid all of this?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I graduated years ago, but in many ways I still have a locker with me that I carry around in my mind. I still often desire to crawl in and through to the other side like those kids in that movie.

In some ways I suppose that is kind of what I do and why I have become a writer, to escape the crowds in the hallways. My imagination has become part my my clique. And I am trying to cope, to come to terms with my grown-up high school life.

It still isn’t always easy for me.