The stain of high school

So many memories from my four years of high school. The crowded hallways, losing the state championship, never being able to get into my locker, being cleverly manipulated into tossing one shoe out a second story window, the "Dream" Team, my lack of a social life, my lack of a love life, the drunk kids during that one presentation of mine, and the daily shame and humiliation I endured in front of my peers (who doesn't experience that in high school?).

But there is one thing I hope to literally carry with me for all time from high school. The staircase sandwich stain.

For years, it was a tendency of my friends and I to eat lunch in one of the staircases of the 300 building. I guess because we wanted to trip up people going up or down the stairs - I'm not really sure. It had a landing halfway up that some of us enjoyed sitting together on. Others enjoyed the actual steps. Regardless, it was our spot.

Anyway, during a routine lunch during sophomore year, Puma, myself, and the guys were eating in our usual places. Puma had grabbed some kind of prepared meal from the airport or something. I remember he had arrived to school because of a trip he made, and just grabbed something to eat he could take to school. Part of the meal included a sandwich that would alter our destinies forever. As Puma unwrapped the sandwich from its plastic covering, it immediately became clear that something was amiss.

Buying food carefully wrapped in plastic, you assume a certain amount of freshness to said food. Not in this case. What he unwrapped was the nastiest, oiliest sandwich any of us had ever seen. Viscous liquid oozed from every pore and it had a smell that began attracting flies.

Puma takes his food quite seriously. He is a not-so-strict vegetarian (he eats fish, and every time I remind him he's not a true vegetarian it irks him to no end) and can be quite picky about what he is eating and where it came from. He was learning that grabbing something to-go from the airport was not the best choice.

Puma proceeded to complain and show-off his disgusting main course to the rest of us. And we were all suitably grossed out as we passed it around.

Suddenly, one of them grabbed it from Puma's hands and tossed it at the far wall. The sandwich slid slowly down the wall, leaving an audible squeak in its wake.

To this day, the portion of the wall that sandwich hit has a large greasy stain on it. I know this because Puma and I visit our high school almost every year and we check on that wall every year, too. That stain still stands. And I hope it stands for as long as that building does.

Some people own bits of the Berlin Wall; keepsakes to remember that mighty symbol of Communist oppression. My hope is to one day own that greasy piece of brick wall. When the time comes for my school to be torn down, Puma and I plan to sneak in and remove that section of wall for ourselves. A keepsake to always remember the oppression of high school by.