Not the Breakfast Club

When I was in high school, there was a hallway that ran along the back of the second floor, bridging the bulk of classrooms from the music room. Along one wall in this corridor were windows that looked below, into the cafetorium—part cafeteria, part auditorium; on the opposite wall, windows that looked out to a rear, outdoor square, and further, to the sports track and field.

On this exterior side of the hall, long benches were built into the wall space, below the windows, and these benches and the floor were carpeted in a heavy-duty red fabric.

This corridor was affectionately known as the Red Room.

Typically, the senior high-school students would use this area to hang out, relax, or work on homework. But as early as the tenth grade, my friends would join the older students in this space. Some would even interact with us.

In the ensuing years, this is where I could always be found, between classes. I would arise early in the morning, make my way to school at least an hour before homeroom started, and would either work on homework or just chill. In the ceiling tiles above my usual sitting spot, I kept a green tray that came from the cafeteria, which I could spin endlessly on the tip of a finger. This particular tray was a bit buckled in the centre and was perfectly balanced, so it would only fall when I grew bored of spinning it.

When I left high school, in 1984, I took that tray with me. I still have it to this day.

(I wonder if I can still spin it??)

Throughout grades 11, 12, and 13, I was developing my photography skills, borrowing my father's Minolta SR-T 101, and in my final two years, I was a photographer for our school yearbook.

You would think that I had taken countless photos of the Red Room but when I look at old photos, my subjects always tended to focus on my friends. A lot are closeups of friends, the Red Room a blurred out background. The only photo that shows any bit of this popular space still has friends filling the frame.

I look at this shot and think back to those days in high school. I'm still good friends with two of the people in this photo. I lost touch with a third person a few years after graduation; the fourth person, I haven't seen since our last day of school.

There are plans underfoot for a 50th anniversary high-school reunion, sometime next year. Even though the school has changed names, changed school boards.

I don't know whether I'll go or not. I already keep in touch with the friends that I want to keep in touch with, so if they go, I'll definitely join them. There are some teachers that I'd like to see again, such as my music teacher. My favourite teacher passed away a few years ago, and there are very few remaining teachers that had enough of an impact on me to warrant seeing them again.

Time will tell.

For now, I'll look at this photo, remember some of the good times, and think back to the Red Room (which disappeared, annexed by the music department, a few years after my friends and I were gone).