Spirit Week

As we continue this stroll down memory lane, the next story I'll share is about my school spirit, or lack thereof. Each year, my high school would have something called Spirit Week, which consisted of a variety of activities for students to participate in and earn points for their grade, culminating in a pep rally on Friday afternoon.

This pep rally was simply the most idiotic thing ever created. First, the winners of a popularity school spirit vote taken during the week for each grade would be named the spirit squad. These 4 guys and 4 girls in each grade would then get to take part in a bunch of games while the rest of the school was forced to watch and cheer them on. Mind you, there were around 250 people per grade, so there were 1000 students watching these 32 popular people. Each game would also have points awarded to each grade, and the class with the most points from all the week's activities would earn the "spirit jug". This old brown jug would then get handed to the spirit squad and they would run around the gym whooping like assholes.

By my senior year, I'd really had enough with spirit week. I got together with some of my friends in the theatre group and we decided to try to steal the popularity school spirit vote. We all voted for 1 guy and 1 girl from our circle of theatre friends and we spread the word to as many people as we thought we could influence. More on this when I recall what happened at the pep rally.

Another of the activities that took place during the week was called the penny drive. There were 4 collection buckets, 1 for each grade, where money was collected for charity. The trick of the penny drive was that pennies collected in your grade's bucket counted as positive points, while silver coins and dollars in your grade's bucket counted as negative points. So, you'd put your pennies in your own grade's bucket and put everything else in some other bucket. Of course the winning grade was always the one that had the total closest to a positive number.

Each morning during announcements, the principal would give the penny drive totals so far. After the Thursday announcements, it became apparent that the seniors were going to win the penny drive unless something drastic changed, and a scheme began to develop in my mind. I decided that I would collect silver money from seniors and tell them that I was going to put it into the freshman's bucket. I talked to all kinds of people, collecting money. Of course, the people that I normally never talked to and actually liked spirit week thought this was a great idea and contributed heavily. The problem was, I didn't put the money into the freshman's bucket and instead put it into the senior's bucket. Yes, I am a liar and was stealing these people's money, but I figured all the money went to charity anyway, so that eliminated any ethical dilemma I may have been feeling.

There was just one little problem with my plan, which came up the next day at lunch. I was sitting in the cafeteria eating my lunch with my friend Kirt, who knew nothing about what I'd done, when 3 rather large football players approached me. Keep in mind, I was a scrawny 125 pound member of the theatre and band. All thoughts are included in parenthesis for comedic value, including Kirt's, which he told me after lunch.

Jock : "Hey asshole, we saw what you did and we want our money."
Delton : "What are you talking about?" (Shit, how'd they find out?)
Kirt : (Why are these dude's demanding Delton give them money?)
Jock #2 : "Don't mess around, we want our money."
Delton : "I'm not giving you any money." (This doesn't look good.)
Kirt : (This doesn't look good.)
Jock #1 : "Listen jerk, you lied and now you owe us money."
Jock #3 : "Yeah!"
Kirt begins to stand up.
Kirt : (Hmmm, this sucks that they're picking on my little buddy Delton. If this gets out of hand, I'll just punch #1 as hard as I can in the face and hope Delton can keep #3 busy while I work on #2.)
Delton : "Kirt, sit down and let me handle this." (I wonder how much money I'd have to give them to get them to leave?)
Kirt sits down and looks at me like I'm crazy.
Delton : "Here's a dollar, now get out of my face."
Jocks take the dollar and leave.
Kirt : "Why in the world are you giving those guys money?"
Delton tells Kirt the story of the penny drive scam.
Kirt : "You idiot, you mean I almost got into a fight with 3 guys because I was going to defend you after you stole from them???"
Delton : "Yeah, thanks buddy, you're a good friend...Uhhh, sure glad it didn't come to that!"

You'd think that was the end of it, but you'd be wrong. Remember when I said I'd recall the story of the pep rally later? Well, that time has come. The pep rally started and the first thing was for the principal to announce the winners of the vote. Both of my friends from the theatre group were voted onto the spirit squad. What joy I felt at helping to displace a couple of the popular people. They participated in all of the stupid games and finally finished that part. Next, the other week's activities results were announced; with the final thing before the awarding of the spirit jug being the results of the penny drive. "In fourth place, the freshman. In third place, the sophomores. And the winners of the penny drive...the juniors!"

Talk about elation, I couldn't believe I'd done it. I was grinning from ear to ear. A couple of seconds later, a chant started up from the senior's section of the gym. I look around, and see Jock #1 talking with a few of his friends and they're pointing at me, leading the chant of "Delton, Delton, Delton!" Of course, my friends from the theatre group had no idea what was going on, they just thought it'd be fun, so they started chanting my name too. Suddenly, half the gym is chanting my name in the middle of this pep rally. Needless to say, I was a little worried.

After the chanting died down, the principal gave the totals. The seniors had enough points overall and were awarded the spirit jug. So, our spirit squad still got to run around like assholes, and no real harm came from my scheme. However, I snuck out the side door of the gym after the pep rally and walked around half of the school building to get to where I needed to be next, just in case.

Nothing more ever came of this, but it was certainly one of my crowning moments from my senior year. I'm sitting here laughing again just recalling these events.


Updated to add: Got an email from Kirt after I told him to read this post. He said: "The only correction I would make to your blog is that I wasn't counting on any help from you in the fight."