Amelia Brown ’18
Do you sit safely through six periods without hearing the deafening boom of rifle fire? Do you feel a sense of equality and respect in all your classes? Of course you do. But all that, luckily, can change!
I was recently flipping through my Class of 1935 Staples yearbook, reminiscing about the days of yore, when I found pictures of the Staples Rifle Club and Red Cross Club. Oh, what wonderful memories I have of these clubs, so you might imagine my dismay when I discovered that they are no longer offered at Staples.
Staples, and schools in general, are all too “safe” these days. In my heyday, the lack of basic safety measures, like seat belts, meant you could have a little adventure before school by tumbling around the backseat.
Kids nowadays are too protected. When we didn’t show up home for dinner and were necking at the drive-in movies, our parents didn’t give us a thought. Now, parents track their kids on their phones and make sure they’re actually going to make it home that night. What wimps!
Now, maybe it’s just my multiple, sustained concussions talking, but the real skills, the fun stuff, is all gone. Rifle club and Red Cross clubs are the real landmarks of a Blue Ribbon education.
The rifle club advisor (bless his soul), Ol’ Mr. Stevenson, taught us the important skills for being a man: shooting targets, shooting cans, shooting clay pigeons and not crying when you got hit by a hot bullet shell. I beat my chest, flex my pecs and hock a loogie just thinking about the thick cloud of testosterone that filled the air each time we we shot our rifles.
Speaking of shooting things, the Red Cross Club was another staple of the Staples community. Whenever we would accidentally injure one another, those girls would be right there to bandage the gory eye or oozing leg.
The best part was they would sit patiently watching us, legs crossed, right over left, under their poofy dresses, as every lady should. What dolls! Ethel was my favorite. You really get to know a person after the 32nd time they’re stitching up a bullet wound on your inner thigh.
The girls of Red Cross always had such high ambitions. Of course, I never actually listened when they were telling me what they were (I was too busy picturing the next can to shoot), but I know Smitty had big dreams. She wanted to, “get a sugar-daddy.” That’s the only female dream I could actually see coming true. Godspeed, Smitty. Godspeed.
Now that there aren’t any classic, gender divided clubs, you don’t get the superiority complexes I enjoyed in the past. What a shame. Ah, how I miss the glory days.
