After leaving school on an early release Wednesday, I headed down Whiskey Road towards downtown Aiken. I was headed to lunch with some friends at the Aiken Prep campus of Mead Hall. As I drove down Lauren Street I thought of how my friends and I used to go trick or treating downtown and how we had our favorite shops.

Some of the shops are gone now and replaced with something else more trendy. I can remember going to the Sweet Cow Creamery after school to get ice cream with my friends or shopping at Pitter Patter. Pitter Patter is now at a different location and Sweet Cow Creamery is no more. But those weren’t the only changes. Aiken Prep was different now too.

I hadn’t been a student at Aiken Prep for years, but it always felt like home whenever I went back to visit. There was always something comforting about the green and white walls with the golden trim. But now that it was a part of Mead Hall, the building seemed like it had morphed into something different. I could recognize the familiar hallways and courtyards, but they no longer felt like a home away from home. Instead of seeing hunter green on the walls there was some foreign color in its place. And instead of seeing students in green polo shirts, they were wearing navy and red shirts. It was as if Aiken Prep had gone through a hostile takeover.

A takeover was exactly how my friends on the Aiken Prep campus had described it. All of the traditions at Aiken Prep had been completely wiped out. As elementary school students, we had always heard about the crazy high school traditions, such as the senior class trip to exotic Costa Rica, and couldn’t wait to take part in them. Those of my friends that stayed at Aiken Prep were very upset when they discovered that they could no longer partake in those traditions. Instead, they had to adopt all of Mead Hall’s traditions, including going to Chapel every Wednesday. Being an outsider looking in I saw a clash between navy and red uniforms with the green and gold spirit.

I still saw friendly faces in the halls, but there were few faces I knew. As I walked through the halls, looking into familiar classrooms I could see that they were no longer the same as they once were. New teachers had inhabited them, the desks were arranged to their liking, and they didn’t welcome me as one of their own. The halls were now decorated with projects and bible verses and other religious posters.

As I walked towards the lunch room with my friends, a sudden feeling came over me. I realized that not only was I a stranger to the school now but so were my friends. We felt like strangers in our own home. As if someone had moved into our house and decided not to tell us. Continuing down the hall, I felt that my childhood memories had been painted over like the walls of Aiken Prep.