Drop the paintbrush and put the orange where we can't see it.

I spent four hours today in a high school auditorium (another local high school, but their theater looks so identical to the one at my school that I forgot where I was) for the Chinese New Year show I mentioned before. I have no idea why I had to show up at 5:00 when the show starts at 7.

My teacher didn't even get there until 5:45 and they didn't take attendance until 6:30...we didn't rehearse or anything, just sat around and talked in the incredibly familiar looking auditorium in school that looks so much cooler than my school.

This school is brick, which I think makes it look like a high school. Brick buildings = schools in my head. There's this growing trend where I live: Building new boxy, rectangular high schools that look like medical research labs and painting them orange.

I have absolutely no idea why this bothers me so much. My high school is white and definitely not one giant box like these new ones. It's all over the place. They're moving my school to a new, bigger one THAT IS GOING TO BE PAINTED ORANGE, but I'll only go to school in it for a year, maybe a year and a half. I don't even care much about that because I don't like the look of my school in it's current condition, even though plain white and spread out is better than boxy and orange. I hate boxy and orange.

The two community high schools in my city are very high school-looking. They just recently built a giant orange version of one of them and plan to tear down the old, normal one. My mom thinks the old one looks depressing and dirty. My sister thinks the reason I like it is because it looks like the school from "The Breakfast Club." Yeah, because that looks like a high school!

I went on this same rant in the car today, and my mom said they chose orange because they figure other colors will go out of style in a decade or so. Um, when have orange buildings ever been in style?? Are they trying to predict future color trends, painting with the hope that orange goes in style in a decade? No.

The new orange community high school that's been built is right down the street from the new orange elementary school. They look exactly the same. The difference between the two sad-looking rectangles is the playground in front the latter. At least the playground isn't orange.

Anyway, I love the school the Chinese New Year show was held at. I went to basketball camp for a few summers when I was little, and we used that school's gym. I was so fascinated by it, and I guess ingrained the picture of that school, the only high school I had ever been in, as the way it should look. The layout looks like a school. It just does. And orange is stupid.

I might write my free choice English essay on this.

Love,
Juliana

Oh, the Chinese show went well. ^_^