All high schools have pep rallies, their own little version of the Nuremberg Rallies, to get the student body all fired up for going to war via sports against neighboring schools. Having never been to one sporting event in 4 years of high school, the only redeeming feature of these spirit rallies was the cheer leaders doing cartwheels and all kinds of body twisting acrobatics. It was like a wholesome striptease. But, overall it was torture. If I remember correctly one of the big draws was you got out of class for awhile.

I had read and cut out an article about some kid from high school that refused to go to his school's pep rallies. He had transferred from another neighboring high school and claimed he still supported his old school, so forcing him to support his new school was not fair and had nothing to do with the state requirements for his education. And it looked like he was right. I cut the article out and put it in my binder as ammo.

From then on out I hid out in the library during pep rallies. I knew I would be caught eventually, and I was, by the infamous Frau Grunewald, the librarian. What made this extra funny was she was German and had the perfect accent and demeanor of "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS". She turned me into the authorities who were already tiring of my antics.

I pulled out my newspaper article and explained that I was actually loyal to our arch enemies, the Santa Cruz Cardinals, and I could not be forced to go to these rallies. I stood strong. My fear of them had evaporated the year before. If you don't care there was nothing they could really do to you. So I ended up in a room with just another teacher and me during these rallies. It was usually a substitute teacher I didn't know. We would both just read and go our own way. I did write a paper on the experience in college that was well received, so it was educational in the long run.......

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3Christopher Anderson, Joe Parks and 1 other