Pep Rally

 Ugh, have you ever had to suffer through a pep rally? I don't mean a fun one, like when your NFL team is in the playoffs. I mean a high school one.

For those of you who need a refresher course, high school pep rallies are held to celebrate the sports teams. Twice a year (fall and spring), the entire student body files out and sits on the bleachers to scream and shout for the jocks.

To make an already dreadful celebration worse, students are seated together by grade level. At my school, each grade has a different color, and classes get points based on how many kids wear that color to school on pep rally day.

Then some admin or teacher grabs a mic and whips the students up by grade level, seeing which grade can scream the loudest.

Then the coaches of each sport stand up and introduce every member of every team. This afternoon my school had baseball, softball, boy's volleyball, robotics, and esports. Well, being a nerd who hates noise, I could get behind the robotics and esports clubs. Still, a lot of shy people got introduced for (in my opinion) no good reason.

Then more screaming, because the first time wasn't enough.

Then there are games that pit one grade level against another, again for points. Stuff like tug of war and musical chairs and water balloon toss. Stuff involving a small number of students from each grade, and even then they have to beg ten seniors to participate.

This riveting spectacle invariably falls on an unseasonably hot and humid afternoon when everyone (including the jocks) would rather be inside dozing through the final class period of the day.

Having endured pep rallies as an alienated teenager back in the 1970s, I can't tell you how positively soul-sucking it is to be sitting through two of these things a year at my current age. As a teen I only had to slog through eight of them, total. Now they just stretch into the distance, almost to the horizon. Pep rallies, pep rallies, rah rah rah.

What is it about our species, that we want to be separated into tribes that compete against other tribes, and we want to celebrate our warrior men and women? Why is screaming and stomping on aluminum bleachers more appealing than, say, making a nice craft at a table, in the shade?

It seems to me that the human race spends much too much time screaming and stomping and forming ridiculous tribes.

I can't end this rant without admitting that I, too, am in a tribe -- the Radical Lunatic Left, and we do get together in big groups from time to time. Looks like I'll be joining some peppy little protests in the weeks to come. But to be completely honest here, I'm ready to pivot. I want my craft table in the shade. I want to sit in a circle and talk about my feelings.

*Sigh* Guess I shouldn't sit down to write a blog post an hour after a high school pep rally. Don't worry, though. I'll bounce back. I'm always ready to MAKE. SOME. NOISE.