It’s funny how a place can be like a time machine and transport you back in time. As I walked around the Old School today, it became the late 1990’s again. Insert your favorite Weezer song here (from the blue CD) or maybe a song from the Cranberries.

The Old School is just as it’s name states, an old school. Once used as an elementary school, but by the time I was a kid, it was home to SAP (kids that had been suspended had to go there) and the local theatre group, Canebrake Players used it for their productions (and thankfully, still do today).

It was a practice field for our softball team (despite having no dirt), as well as, a place I could practice hitting tennis balls against its huge wall.  Climbing up it’s old metal steps and reaching the top was like scaling a mountain! It was also a place to play yard football with some of the coolest kids you had ever met at the age of 12. It was a place to ride your bike or roller blade down it’s long sidewalk.  It was also where your older neighbor’s band practiced (picture a lot of plaid and insert teen angst here- Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box). Older guys always seemed so much cooler than the immature ones in your grade.

As a young teenager, it was a place to sneak off too and still a few kisses and hold a sweaty palm (insert Matchbox 20’s Push, classic make out song in 97′).

When we hung out at the Old School, all we had was time. We were just trying to find our place where we might fit in in Junior High and how to get our crush to notice us (insert Love Fool by the Cardigans here). The Old School represents a simpler time that I will always cherish. The Old School helped raise me.

*This is dedicated to my friends from Junior High. I may not see you everyday or talk to you everyday but thank you for your friendship during those awkward years. I will never forget the times we had.