What you once were isn't what you want to be any more

Today I went to a visitation/funeral at the church attached to the school I attended from kindergarten through eighth grade, which is about five hours from where I live. Between the visitation and the funeral, I went in to the school and walked around. There was more I wanted to explore, but I think I made the office people uncomfortable.

The school now serves pre-K through fifth grade and, based on the size of the cafeteria, now located in what was once the science lab where I dissected a fish, it looks like enrollment is quite low.

In addition to snapping a photo of the hall where 6th-8th grade classes were held, I took a picture of the hall where K-3rd grade classes once were held. The drinking fountain almost was at knee level. I thought my siblings would appreciate the pictures. (The drinking fountain one, or "bubbler" as referred to in Wisconsin, won't load. What the heck, Blogger app? It is loading a photo from the MS 150 instead. Maybe it wants me to focus?)

The most relevant photo, though, is of the stairwell we used to take to the nasty basement to go under what was once the high school to get to the part of the school where the office was. If you were a good student, you got to leave class to take the attendance chart, in its plastic sleeve, to the office. Once there, you might be asked to take blue-hued mimeographs back to your teacher. It was cool to be picked, but terrifying. The basement smelled like sweaty high school boys, had cages filled with sporting equipment and cleaning supplies, and the boilers and whatnot were down there. It was a scene straight out of a Freddy Krueger movie. I used to run through there, terrified of aliens, monsters, and body snatchers, all to take the damned attendance sheet to the office. Why the heck did they send little kids down there??

Anyhow, I walked down there today to confront the demons. I was slightly scared to go down the steps, but when I got down there, I saw that they cleaned everything up and it is clean and bright. I almost wanted to see the scary place just to confirm that it was as twisted as I remember.

I got to see my dad on father's day, which was a perk of going to Wisconsin. We got to talk about my upcoming bike trip and the training I need to do to pull off 280 miles. I'm looking forward to some more rides soon. The last one was 36 miles, two days ago. Time to ramp things up.

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