High school

These were the days of our lives...

We woke up at the crack of dawn and waited by the two touring car buses to take us to Rome. The trip our Grammar school traditionally sent all their 5th year students on.

The trip we smoked and drank red wine on the Piazza Navone and got told off by the police. Where we missed our curfew and couldn’t get into the convent we were sleeping at. Where we scolded our classmates who had accidentally brought weed in their trouser pockets.

Rome where our Latin teacher showed us the best places to get coffee and ice cream.

Rome where I went to the pay phone with my hands full of change my friends collected daily to call my boyfriend’s mother to check if he was still alive. Who by then had just woken up after his 11 week coma following a near fatal car accident, only to have an infection settling in his already overly pressured brain. He had been put back in intensive care just before we left.

Where my friends held me together when my entire life was falling apart.

On the way back our Latin teacher took the driver’s microphone and started talking. He had been warned by other teachers not to come with us. We were the class the Wednesday teacher meetings were dedicated to. We were an unruly bunch. Loud, opinionated, stubborn, challenging. My heart sank. We had not exactly been on our best behaviour this week. Not in the sense of following the rules, anyway.

I loved Latin and I loved our 5th grade teacher. He was witty, wonderful, kind, patient, compassionate and one of the few teachers I cared about and didn’t want to disappoint.

He went on to say that in spite of what his colleagues had said, which was all true, he had had the best trip to Rome ever.

That was until one of the touring cars broke down and we had to separate. We had to leave half of us behind. I cried the rest of the way home and fell asleep to Pretty Woman playing on the bus TV-screen.

We were unruly, but looking back, we freaking rocked it.