"Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded."
School spirit. That’s a foreign concept to me. You see, I have no school spirit. I have never had school spirit. And I never will have school spirit.
I went to Three Oaks Senior High School in Summerside, PEI. We were a fairly normal high school, activity-wise. We had sports teams that went and played sports games. But did anyone go to watch these games? No. We had clubs, too. Did anyone join these clubs? Ha. My school was apathetic. My school was so apathetic that we didn’t even bother with cheerleaders and pep rallies and all that, because most students would rather sit in class ignoring the teacher than sit in the gym and cheer. I was one of those students.
I did a couple things in high school. I helped run the magazine campaign, for one. I showed up every day of the weeklong duration of that campaign, except for that one day I forgot about it and that one day I decided to take a longer lunch. I co-wrote and performed in a school play (okay, that was for credit, so it probably doesn’t count). I went to a couple random meetings of different clubs before deciding I wasn’t interested.
Okay, okay. I didn’t do anything in high school. So, when I graduated without one of those nice awards that “involved” people got, I vowed to actually become involved in some things at university. I looked in my little university handbook, and I read the little descriptions of all the clubs, and I decided that it might be fun to join the photographic society and take pictures, or make movies with the independent filmmaker’s society, or write a play for the theatrical society, or write for the Watch.
Summer passed, and I went to my new school. I even went to society day and signed up for a few interesting-looking societies. But when it came time to actually go to meetings, I either forgot, or was too busy doing other things, or just decided I’d rather go out with my friends than go to a boring meeting. So I didn’t get involved in anything.
And I’m not sorry about this. I later found out that contributors to the Watch seem to have a different style of humor from my own. I found out that the independent filmmakers make pretentious and badly-acted movies. I found out that the theatrical society... well, let’s just say that they’re an unfair bunch of idiots who wouldn’t know a good actor, or a good play for that matter, if it came up and bit them on the ass. I don’t even know if there still is a photographic society, and I probably wouldn’t be good enough to join that, anyway.
I’m in my second year at this school now, and, while I still don’t want to join any of those societies, I find myself feeling a little left out of school life. Elinor, after being cruelly rejected by that terrible theatrical society (most likely because she was too good of an actress and they didn’t want to be shown up), shares this feeling. So, together we have come up with a plan. We are going to start a society.
But we’re not going to start one of those average, boring, artsy, pretentious, be-kind-to-your-fellow-man societies, oh no. We are going to start the ASS.
What does ASS stand for, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. ASS is the clever acronym for the Apathetic Students' Society. Our goal? Well, we don’t really have one yet, unless you count sticking our posters (all of which have “ASS” written on them in huge letters) up around the school and seeing how many people will come to our first meeting. Other than that, nothing. Perhaps we will hold “procrastination parties” at 1 a.m. on FYP Sundays, when all the little first-years have their papers due. Perhaps we’ll be made a real society, with our name in the handbook and everything. Or perhaps it’ll just give us something to do when we feel bored and left out and uninvolved.
This is all a big joke, of course. The main reason for our starting this society is so that we can make fun of all those existing school-spirit societies. That and the plastering King’s with ASS posters thing; I think that’s going to be pretty cool.
For me, though... I guess that, by starting this society, I’m really attempting to combine my total lack of enthusiasm for any school-sanctioned activity with my desire to be a part of things. These two things may be an oxymoron, but hey, so is the ASS.
