I am guilty of spending my hours of Mrs. Freaner's freshman English class trying not to get caught gazing out the windows at our new school being built right behind us. I was a Freshman the very last year the old school building (est. ~1932) was in use. I feel like I got the best of both worlds. I got the chance to be apart of history and experience the old building; however I also got to spend three years in the beautiful air conditioning of the new school. The school may no longer be standing, but we all have our memories of the times spent in that old building.

1. Our own version of "Shark Week(s)"

Oh yes. The time of the year everyone hated. You didn't even have to have Mrs. Krostal for a class or a class near her room but, you knew when it was time to dissect sharks. It wasn't uncommon for a building that old to not have air conditioning. However, if you add formaldehyde, dead sharks and no AC let me tell you that it was not pleasant. To say the least..

2. Climbing onto the roof

Whether you did it yourself or just heard of people doing it; we all knew that it was possible to climb out of Ms. Garls' window and get onto the roof of the gym. But you couldn't stay up their obviously. Then we could just shimmy down the fire escape to get back to ground level.

3. Mrs. Herron's personal kitchen

Missed breakfast? Don't like whats on the menu for lunch? Just step into the foods room and cook up whatever you'd like. Especially because my Freshman year Mrs. Herron was pregnant and there were random subs in and out of her room at all times.

4. Fake vents

Whatever you do, please do not burn your food. But, just turn on the vents above the stove you say? Unfortunately, they are not real. They looked really real to even the inspectors though so it was all OK. (: All in all they were just fake pipes with normal looking grates on the end attached to the ceiling.

5. The voyage to lunch everyday

Yeah our school didn't have a cafeteria. Everyday, rain or shine or snow or hail or tornado, we had to walk across the street to the grade school for lunch. Which was fine if it was a beautiful day, but in Illinois how likely is that to happen?

6. Equipment Room/ Showers

The women's locker room is a whole different point of its own. However, my favorite thing about it, was how the showers did nothing but give us somewhere to store all of the volleyball equipment. Now this is only relevant to the Jr. High girls volleyball team or P.E classes. Which then leads me to my next point..

7. The Gym

This is not the best picture, but it can give you an idea of just how small our gym was. We couldn't have any of our High School games here because there just wasn't enough room. You couldn't inbound the ball during a basketball game from either of the baselines because your feet would not be able to fit between the out of bounds line and the wall. You like to shoot 3's from the corner? You are out of luck; there is not enough room there either. Don't get me wrong I loved that gym. Having practice there meant less room to run! Another unique thing about our gym was that if it ever rained a lot, we had to block off the back corner with trashcans because the roof leaked. It was almost like we had our own Brimfield swimming pool.

Not only was it small, but it was also where most of my memories of freshman year were made. Homecoming week, P.E. classes, hanging out after lunch, and making myself get to school early so I could socialize with everyone before the bell.

8. Our boiler issue

Although I never saw our boiler, I imagine that it looked something like this. The winter of my freshman year our boiler broke (no heat = no school). We ended up missing like 3 or 4 days I think because our boiler was so old, they didn't even make parts for it anymore! But no fear. They just welded a bunch of random metal together to "fix it." I can't complain though because it did hold up the rest of the winter.

9. Art & Ag

If you were fortunate enough to have an Art or Ag class, than you knew how it was to have to walk outside for class! Or if you were one of the really lucky ones that had a locker out there, you also knew the pain. These classes and lockers were held in a little building not attached to the rest of the school. Now, it wasn't a very far walk, but it was terrible when it was raining, snowing, or just extremely cold.

10. Bathroom (singular)

If you don't include the one bathroom stall in the locker rooms (that I swear were haunted so no one went in by themselves), we only had one restroom for each gender. Each of those bathrooms had only three stalls (for teachers and students). Which didn't normally cause a problem unless it was in between classes, during homeroom/ lunch because people were trying to kill time, or whenever we had a dance or function at the school.

11. Casey's runs

Before they locked us in our brand new prison.. i mean school, there was always days where you could convince at least one of your teachers that day to go on a Casey's run. If your teachers said no? Just go find a teacher that's not in class ask to go "run errands" for them. You could always just leave. There were so many ways to leave that building going unnoticed it was a bit unreal. Kids would just leave and go to Casey's and get food and just make sure they bring their teacher back something. Each teacher had "their thing" and each kid knew what that was.

Yeah, our old school wasn't the nicest facility ever, but it had so many memories made up and down those halls. It was sad to see it go. Our new school is nice as could be and we are all very lucky to be given such an amazing school to learn in but, it will never be the same. Although the building is gone, the memories aren't and I can't wait to tell my stories to kids for years to come. I truly feel blessed to have been given a chance to experience that history for at least a year.