This one is for Brenda. Brenda went to the Catholic school up until 8th grade, and so our paths did not cross until freshman year, when I sat behind her (alphabet order) in Mrs. Jack’s English class. During this time, her and I perfected the art of passing notes in class. I’m not going to bore you with high school tales, but instead talk with you about a lost art that “kids these days” will not understand: The art of passing notes…written notes….on paper….using a pen… in school.
As everyone knows (since we all went to school), there is an entire unknown world, culture, language, and code(s) going on throughout the school day that adults do not know about. When teaching, I used to quiz my classes about this and routinely heard things like: The teachers really have no idea what goes on. We time bathroom visits across classes so that we can meet up with each other (this led me to never let a kid go at the top or bottom of an hour…lest it was some plan with a kid from down the hall, if they asked at, say 9:23AM I knew it was likely legit..there’s some classroom management for you)….some kid has a snack business that he’s running from his locker (Jay and I shut down that one), it’s safer to go to guidance than the nurse, because guidance “doesn’t judge”….and on and on. Most times, the stories I heard were benign and kids being kids. When I began my career in 1995, passing notes ON paper was still a thing, but computers and cell phones have killed it. This makes me sad.
Like most teenagers, I kept a shoebox of the best notes that I received. Most were hilarious, and some contained correspondence between myself and the note recipient that went back and forth for days…on the same piece of paper. Sometimes the notes turned into full stories (mostly fiction…and high school subject matter) and sometimes the notes contained funny doodles or drawings. The shoebox is long gone, but I am happy to tell you that my memory is not….so…
To begin, the majority of notes began with no name (that was put on later when the note was folded). Instead, a common greeting was “What’s ⬆️? Not 2 much here…this class is SOOOO boring. We are reading Huck Finn. STOOPID. Well, we are doing a question sheet, and so I am doing this. Planz for the weekend? Movies? Did you see Laura today? She looks amazing. That blue sweater with her eyes. My God delicious. Did you bring lunch? I can’t do the pizza anymore…sux. I’m gonna go to the school market and get a chip which if u wanna meet up we can see if Anne comes to lunch. I heard she’s dating a senior. Keep it under wraps because if he’s a senior, we don’t want to be caught looking. My locker jammed this morning so now I have to carry all my books and stuff all day. sux. ok, I better get these questions done before Huard sees me. He’s still in the hall talking with Griffin but I can hear him laughing. Oh dude….Brenda just went by, she’s WICKED cute. I’m going to bother her in English today. Did you do the SS homework? That statement was dumb….obviously FDR packed the courts….he was president for 43 years or something…. new deal this. ok gotta go. later dude.
-Pat
So now I have this note and I have to fold it in order to pass it to Gary, Frank, Eric, or any other of my boys that I will see in the hallway between classes (we had 3 or 4 minutes of passing time…enough to change routes to see the cute girls, share a snack, or grab a quick pee break. Back to the fold…you see, there were. 2 main ways that I remember: the square and the triangle. The square was neat and easy to fit in the palm of your hand, so when in the hallway, you could high 5 someone and put the note in their hand (we were always so secretive…looking back now, I doubt if any adult cared if we passed papers in the hall haha…high school…everyone is the center of their own universe). The triangle was simply the square with one more fold….one corner to the opposite corner so it was smaller, tighter, and more aerodynamic. The triangle was key for passing a note within a class. It could be flicked, thrown (when teacher teacher was facing the board), skidded across the floor, and so on. If the triangle wasn’t caught by the recipient, it landed with a loud plop on the floor (or desk if the aim was on) and then you held your breath to see if anyone would bust you for throwing it (if the class was quiet) or, worse, if the teacher heard it and confiscated it. We all had an irrational fear of our notes being opened and read aloud to the class. BRUTAL. I don’t think this ever happened to me, but I did threaten to do it once when I was in my early teaching days….until I read the content of the note, and then….not so much I could read aloud due to profanity and subject matter. The blushing kids were embarrassed enough. I remember crumpling up the note and throwing it away.
These days I wonder if there are any kids writing notes or letters at all. When forced to write in school, the majority of kids tolerate the process, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a note, folded in a tight square or triangle, sail across a classroom, or found discarded in a corner of the hallway (corridor near the “bubbler”) in school. Is anyone still practicing this lost art, or does society need to be challenged on TikTacTok or some other stupid time-suck to bring this back?
Oh how I wish I had that shoebox now Brenda. Reposting some of those notes and letters would be worse than having our personal information stolen online huh? By the way everyone….writing notes turned into writing actual letters when all of us Salem High kids went off to college. We sent snail mail to stay in touch during the semester. Sometime around my junior year, a professor mentioned going to the campus library and sending an “electronic mail” and I thought….what the hell is electronic mail?
Stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned. Happy Birthday Brenda. Give your husband Tom a nice kiss for me. I miss him at the parent conference meetings and band concerts. Love to your family.
Moeschen! 
Great stuff!