I wear my Neshaminy High School  shirt to bed in my Dorm at The New School.

 

I am sitting with a girl from The New School and she’s telling me of growing up in the city. 

 

About leaping off dirt-filled sidewalks into puddles, a mixture of dirt, shit, and conflicts. Watching people cover themselves in trash bags when the winter wind threatens to bleed the life from them and then looking up at the adjacent luxury apartments, designer curtains lining the windows and the owners clinking bottles of champagne. 

 

Your hometown features several divided sections, disparate in atmosphere but congruent in attitudes. The trucks with flags cascading in the wind displaying a man who is most hated in New York. Teenagers that lounge from the schoolyard to a smoke break to the neighboring mall a couple streets over, soaking in their dulled confines. 

 

I know everything about Neshaminy pride.

 

Neshaminy Pride was understanding that not all people are understanding of certain people. It would take a miracle for the world to have one transfixed mindset and that is not something even the youngest of generations have mastered. Younger people are good at adapting to the calamities bestowed upon us by older generations. Their spiteful preconceptions, their stigma around cognitive clarity, and their lack of ability to conceptualize the ever-expanding of the sexual climate. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is walking past k hall and laughing at it. Because K hall is the r*tard hall. It’s where you go if you have autism or an Adderall addiction. In 10th grade, you’ll go there for health class and you’ll have to wonder what life is like for the kids that you jeer at every day. It's just so fucking funny someone who doesn't comprehend social skills isn't it? It's just all in good fun they're laughing too, completely unaware that they're the center of your ridicule so it can't possibly be categorized as bullying. You stay away from the ones who are already sticking needles into their arms or if they’re still just snorting pills. You all treat it like a mental hospital. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is knowing that you’re more alike than different. Because even the popular kids are bounded by drug-addicted parents, unconcerned teachers, and withering futures that fade a little more with every reckless decision. It doesn’t matter if you’re known for house parties that only live in the dreams of others or if you moved from Philly to escape a foster home. You’re all counting on the next disaster. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is being very careful about what you say and who you get involved with because you’re always one wrong word away from having your teeth knocked out. You see videos of girls in the bathrooms pummeling each other, ripping out clumps of each other's hair. You watch boys punch security guards while they're trying to restrain their thrashing fists. You know that story about the kid who got jumped because he got his team disqualified during Gym Night. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is saying things that nobody asked you to say and thinking things you wish you could. After a storm took the lives of one of our own you’re surrounded by students slamming their sobbing bodies into one another, some teachers offering counseling and others saying it’s a part of life so why don’t you study for the chemistry exam. It’s realizing who wants a little more attention when the Snapchat stories are all dedicated to remembrance when half of the users hiding behind cracked screens never even had a conversation with the victim of the raging waters besides telling him to move out of the way of their locker. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is sitting with the knowledge that you will never get the role in the school musical. It doesn’t matter if you even audition, the director is already rolling her eyes at you as you leave the stage. She wants to see her drama students shine. She wants the rest of you to think that equality is considered. It’s all whose parents know who and who’s given the most PTO money that year. You can’t escape nepotism anywhere.

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is arguing with white kids about why they shouldn’t say the N word. And screaming at football players who are decorating your friends in degradation as they feel personally attacked when a rainbow flag is raised on the football field. The All-American high school is threatened when someone who isn’t a cliche enters the halls, brandishing black studded belts and hair bleeding into a pastel ombre. The alternative revolution certainly condemns your choice to wear $500 sneakers but you’d hate to admit that the ones you wish to be so far away from are the ones who catch your eye. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is trying not to cringe when the loudspeaker shrieks during 8th period to announce the candidates for the Mr. R*dskin pageant. Or walking by the school store and wondering how cute that hoodie would be if it didn’t say “skins” in poorly formatted cursive writing outlined in red and blue. You plead with yourself to hold back the eyerolls when the boys at the front of the football game hyped up on warm beer and nicotine pound on their chests, screaming at their friends on the team, watching feathers from their headdresses fly into the blinding stadium lights. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is biting back frustration that nobody reads the newspaper. Every time a new issue is delivered you grab a stack and slide them across the desks of everyone in your classes. You encourage everyone to try the crossword puzzle there’s some tricky ones in there. You know they probably won’t read your op-ed about finally changing the mascot, or creating more gender neutral bathrooms, or why the suicide rate is so high. When the day ends, diminished souls released into the afternoon sunlight, you’re left picking up tossed copies on the floor and then heading off to the next newspaper meeting. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is picking out which teachers will make your misery a little more bearable and which ones are just batshit crazy. The English department is comprised mostly of some of the most sincere, caring, and intelligent people you’ll ever meet while the history department is known for being a mixed bag of mom type teachers who look like they’ve just baked you chocolate chip cookies, and creepy old schoolers who will stare at your jean shorts a little too long when you enter the classroom. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride is difficult. It’s a peculiar division of grasping onto the traditional American high school experience and realizing that hypothetically it could be worse. Bensalem High School is known for vicious fights. The schools just 20 minutes away in Philadelphia end up on the news when a student is stabbed and left for dead in a locker room. It’s all so horrifying, our country’s obsession with violence, our entanglement with hate not ready to fully release our grip. It’s the consequences they fear. It’s the change. Because what is high school without the dances you’re too drunk to remember, the gun safety assemblies you slept through, the cyberbullying, the drug experimentation, the sex scandals. It’s the closest most of us will ever get to being on a reality show. 

 

Having Neshaminy Pride “builds futures” as their slogan says. A future forever associated with the relentless feeling of hopelessness, the questioning every aspect of your identity, the crying yourself to classes, the avoiding conflict at every corner, the wondering if you’re going to make it out of this cinder block schedule alive. Like they say: The best years of your lives.