In high school, we had a five minute passing period to get from class to class. This seems like a reasonable amount of time, but we were always late. “We,” being the almost 2,000 high schoolers that made up Oak Park and River Forest High Schoool. We are the Huskies! And we are always late!
So the administration decided that what would help would be to blast music over the intercom system for four minutes – and then shut it off – communicating to the student body that we had one minute to get to class. The music the principal decided to play was Top 40, which, in my day meant Arrested Development, EnVogue, Boyz II Men, and Dee-Lite. The bell would ring and all of the sudden the first beats of “Motown Philly” would come on, escorting us out of Physics and into the hallway (I’m lying. I was asked to leave Physics because I burned myself trying to melt glass. I took “ChemCom,” short for “Chemistry in the Community,” instead. We did things like test the pH balance of your hair. I was getting a solid C+.)
Here’s what happens when a bunch of high schoolers who have been sitting for 45 minutes hear dance music: We dance. We might go to our lockers, but we do it with our hands in the air, and, well, we wave them around like we just don’t care. We bop our heads. We turn and twirl. Some of us might do the running man. Others might practice our latest Drill Team routine we’re performing at a football or basketball game that weekend. Here’s what’s NOT happening: nobody is getting to class. We are all lost in the music and suddenly it’s gone and we are all running like crazies, dropping our books and pencils, and trying to get to class on time.
Dancing in between classes is one of my favorite memories of high school. For five minutes everyone forgot about the drama of high school: that we didn’t understand 45x-567y/-34=z, that we didn’t know whether we’d get asked to Homecoming, that we had no clue what year WWII ended, or wondering what that kid with the spiky hair and the U2 shirt thought of us. It was almost like Kindergarten all over again. Do you remember that? Wasn’t that the greatest? To not even consider that you looked like a fool dancing? That you didn’t even know what the word “cool” meant?
I remember what made the administration nix the Top 40 music. Somewhere between one and two hundred of us were scuffling out of lunch heading towards our afternoon classes when Arrested Development’s “Tennessee” came on. I remember being on the stairs when the dancing started, and the crowd below me looked like popcorn kernels before they popped, or water that was just beginning to boil, as the beat of the music got the best of them. I remember getting the shivers and trying really hard not to cry. I feel stupid admitting that here, but all these kids – some I knew since I was five, some I barely knew, some I didn’t get along with, and some I adored, here we all were dancing to the same beat. And when the chorus came around, we all sang, “Take me to another place, take me to another land, make me forget all that hurts me, let me understand your plan.”
We were talking to God, right? We’re pleading with him: Bring me somewhere else. Help me understand what’s going on! Isn’t that sort of like what Jesus said in the garden? “Take this from me,” and then, “Let it be your will?” Take me somewhere else, Lord. But if you can’t, if you won’t, give me understanding, peace, confidence that I’m supposed to be here.
It seems like the greatest call a high schooler could pray. And I don’t know, maybe I’m naïve, but I think God hears our prayers even when we don’t know we are praying. Sort of like a mother knowing when her child is exhausted before she can articulate it.
That was the day they stopped the music. I guess we got too rowdy, singing to a God some of us didn’t know we were reaching towards.
Kathy Tyson says
I really enjoyed this, and I had a visual of what all my high school friends would be grooving to. I wish the music could just keep playing!
Elizabeth Ryan says
Believe you were correct as a teen and correct now. My belief is that God hears/feels our prayer(s) before we can even articulate them in words. Also believe all prayers are answered in the best way possible for us. Sometimes it is very difficult to say and mean ‘thy will be done’; but through His grace, we can do or endure just about anything. <3