Writer sums up senior year in scent Roof(ing) Tar: A Satire ☺
For four long years (a theoretical 720 days, which most of us have been counting down since at least midterms), we, the class of 2008, have dragged our bodies into the rather dreary halls of Penn-Trafford High School. On good days, our nostrils were assailed with the scent of bacon or a waft of icing from the Foods classrooms; on bad ones, those smells were masked by the odors of stink bombs or burnt … something. This year, we added another aroma to the flavorful mélange: freshly-laid roof tar. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of vanilla scent notwithstanding, the waves of tar fumes which greet pupils every morning, without exception, have certainly been an interesting experience, and one worthy of much lunch table gossip. Even teachers passing in the hallway can be overheard bemoaning the lack of fresh air. Did it cross no one’s mind to sample the tar before it was delivered by the palletful to the high school? Whatever the reason, students and teachers alike have been subjected to more than the usual range of cringe-inducing odors in the past few weeks. One may also speculate, probably with a similar futility, about the health effects of the noxious tar fumes. Faculty were recently shown an educational (and, according to more than one staff member, brilliantly-acted) video about the possible side effects of the tar smell; they were assured health concerns were nonexistent. Right. And the pregnant Senora Alba left school because she was struck by a sudden urge to go sky diving. P-T students, thanks in large part to the “effective, efficient, quality” education received at this school, are not stupid. We know something which disrupts classroom concentration (always at an all-time high near the end of the year) and causes school-wide headaches is not something we want filtered through our heating and cooling system day after day. Like most improvement projects undertaken at P-T, the re-roofing debacle has bad timing, to say the least, mainly because students are affected during the last few weeks of the year, when preparation for AP exams and finals are reaching a head. The tar scent currently permeating the school is arguably no worse than the constant racket which ensued while new lockers were installed or the inconvenience of only a select few school bathrooms being open to student use, but it does inspire numerous conjectures about how much thought was put into the project’s timing. And so life at P-T continues as usual as the class of 2008 anxiously awaits graduation. The school commits what the student body sees as thoughtless oversights, and that same student body wastes no time voicing their complaints. Yes, P-T has become a source of both annoyance and frustration yet again. But at least we can graduate comforted with the knowledge that some things, good or bad, never change.
