Living High School to the Fullest (Completed)

Chapter 23: Canvas Bags Campaign

This chapter is dedicated to mysterydude. She made the lovely cover on the right. Thank you so much for that! And she's the chairman, president, queen, secretary-general... you get the idea... of Team Nick. Yep, she's one of the few who's chosen only one team, and she's sticking to it! :)

Chapter 23

Funny Hat Day had been a huge hit and right after Emma has been over the moon for quite a while because her prank was the talk of the week. The incentive of a one hundred dollar prize had indeed appealed to a lot of students: almost three hundred envelopes had been stuffed into our special locker. I guess money does make the world go round.

Picking the winner had been a tedious task. In the end, we all decided that Trevis Smith, a freshman, deserved it the most. Trevis is in Mr. Murdoch’s algebra class together with my brother and David. He had made himself a paper hat, gluing two paper ears to it. The left ear said: “one” and “in”, the right one said “other” and “out”, and there was a big arrow on the hat between the ears. It might not have been the most sophisticated or colorful hat, but we just loved the poetic beauty of it. Seeing that “in one ear, out the other” is one of Mr. Murdoch’s favorite lines when scolding his students. Seriously, it’s like he gets money for every time he says it. Naturally, he was infuriated when he saw it. Well, he didn’t like all the hats, to put it nicely, and almost popped a vein according to Brad. In the end, the students stood united and unlike most other classes, everybody in that particular algebra class was wearing a hat, showing solidarity with David as if they had known that he had inspired the whole prank in the first place. After Mr. Murdoch had been almost yelling for the first five minutes, he simply ignored it for the rest of the lesson.

I think Brad suspected that Emma was behind the whole thing when she not so subtly asked him how Mr. Murdoch reacted to the hat parade. Also, the two Yankees tickets she gave him and his friend David completely out of the blue might have been a hint. Yes, we bought tickets for a Yankees game from the money that was left over after giving Trevis his well deserved prize. Best thing about it? After Funny Hat Day was over, Mr. Murdoch hadn’t asked David to take off his Yankees cap even once. Maybe he somehow understood that the whole thing had been mostly for his benefit? Who knows.

Luckily, none of the teachers figured out which students had been responsible for the little act of rebellion. But Dinah overheard that our principal planned on fixing the little loophole in our official school rules, meaning that he was going to forbid future Jefferson High generations from wearing any sort of headwear during other lessons than P.E. Too bad. Funny Hat Day would be such a fun tradition to have.

As soon as Funny Hat Day was over, all of us were sucked right back into the regular routine of homework, quizzes and projects of all kinds. Dinah and Emma had been pretty busy with the drama club, preparing the props for this year’s play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I myself had been wrapped up with The Postillion and the environmental club. Oh, Lauren made me work for it. She is something else.

Anyway, after several meetings, heated discussions, a thousands e-mails and phone calls, we finally had our canvas bag campaign ready to go. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to set up our table neither inside the cafeteria nor right in front of it. Mr. Finnegan wouldn’t allow it for insurance reasons. Yeah, right.

So we had to make do with an alcove in the hallway. Lauren was peeved out about it and she told us that it is all about location, location, location. Come to think of it, she would make a good real estate agent. I bet she could even sell haunted ramshackle ruins right above an Indian burial ground with no problem at all.

We tried to make the best out of our situation and put our posters behind the table that was covered with canvas bag samples in all colors of the rainbow. Different sizes, too. I had done some internet research and stolen most of the slogans from existing go green campaigns. No need to reinvent the wheel. I had tried my best to pick a whole array of them, hoping that we had something to offer for everyone.

There were the fairly regular ones, for students and teachers alike, such as Keep it clean, keep it green; There is no Planet B or Don’t be mean, go green. Then we had Green is so the new black, a little something for our fashionistas. Or Bee gentle with our environment, complete with a cute little cartoon bee; the bag for everyone who is in touch with his or her inner child. Plus something a little saucier: Save water, share a shower. Not necessarily a true canvas bag campaign slogan, but I figured that some of the guys would love it. Last, not least, we offered bags in our school colors saying Go Lions; I survived Freshman/Sophomore/Junior/Senior Year at Jefferson High and I survived the SATs. Not to mention that we provided a special service: personalized canvas bags with your very own slogan or design.