After The Bell

Evening has settled in at Apple Hill, soft and gold, the kind of light that makes the trees look like they’re glowing from within. The breeze moves just enough to keep the mosquitoes guessing, and if you stand real still, you can hear the cicadas tuning up for their evening concert. It’s peaceful now.

It’s always interesting being in the school the week after the kids have left. The echoes still hang in the halls--laughter, footsteps, somebody’s sweet, but persistent, recorder solo--but the building itself breathes easier. You miss them, of course, but there’s something honest and good about that post-season quiet. The kind of silence where grownups can talk freely, finish a sentence, maybe even a whole thought. No distractions, just time to clean up, tape brown paper over bookshelves, label things for summer students, tidy the corners of learning. Because learning happens all year round at HLS, and I’m proud of that.

And in those quiet hours, I find myself thinking--sometimes laughing--not at anyone, just at the world. Because I think folks forget where they came from. Especially those middle school years, where everything was either a crisis or a comedy, and often both at once. We pretend we’ve moved on, but the lessons we learned back then still hum in the background of our grown-up lives--if we’re paying attention.

I remember a kid--let’s just say he had a gift for strategy. He’d walk down the hall, and if he wanted to slip away unnoticed, he’d roll a smoke bomb in the opposite direction. Just enough ruckus to draw attention--teachers would dash off like they were putting out a five-alarm fire, and meanwhile, that kid had all the freedom in the world. A little chaos here, a little sneakiness there.

It was misdirection, pure and simple--one of the oldest tricks in the book. Junior high didn’t invent it, but it sure knew how to sharpen it.

And tell me that doesn’t sound familiar now.

Because life, my friends, is just a slightly larger middle school with better lighting, higher stakes, and stronger coffee. And somewhere, someone’s always tossing a smoke bomb to keep your eyes off the real story.

But we know better. We were there. We saw it coming. And maybe, just maybe, we smile because we remember how it used to be--when the tricks were simpler, and the stakes were mostly hall passes and after-school detention.

And still, somehow, it all mattered…

Still does…