both sides of the road shared the same sky

the right side of the road

the left side of the road

sketches

still not happy with the sky

details

(if you click the picture, it will enlarge, but to get back you might have to click the back button)

Thursday night my oldest had freshman class orientation (Class of 2014! OMG!) and I brought him and his little brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl to the high school, listened to the speeches, watched the powerpoints, looked around at the other parents and wondered what they did for a living... looked at the other students and was relieved they all look pretty much like mine.

Then we were divided into tour groups according to last name and TA teacher. (TA is a midwestern term for home room, I think.) During the tour we wound around and around a grid of corridors and hallways which I think, well in my head anyway, probably resembles a rat maze from above. Or a checkerboard. Something. Complex. It's like, um, turn the box sideways, and there are hallways on the horizontal sides of the box, then through the middle of the box there are more, inner hallways vertically? The rooms are all in these inner hallways. And some of the rooms lead into eachother. And I have no idea how my son, Son of Me, is going to find his way around that school. But that's not the part that's funny.

Little brothers have embarassment potential, and they were prepped ahead of time by their big brother. Don't say anything, Don't do anything. Don't blink. Don't breathe. Dont. You. Dare. Bring. Toys.

They also hold great potential for amusement.

During the winding upstairs downstairs back and forth tour, we passed through several classrooms. In one hall, out of nowhere, my youngest pipes up, and from around the gigantic sucker in his mouth asks one of the senior class tour guides, "So are we going to hell now?"

Lots of people laughed and I couldn't really figure out what he was talking about.

"What are you talking about, Mr.C?"

"I just want to know if we are going to see hell now?"

(giggles from the 8th grade girls)

I kept trying to figure out what he meant, and he just said the same things again.

(more giggles from the 8th grade girls)

So as I was saying, we passed through many classrooms. Ones with sewing machines, ones with computers, ones with teachers handing out candy at the door (yay for candy!).

We finally got home after another speech or something and I asked him again, while he sat slurping a sucker, "What did you mean about hell? What made you say that?"

"Well we went through that room with the man with all his skin cut off! I thought we were going to see hell."

Hell is a science lab featuring a life size, flayed torso mannequin of the purple bulging human body muscles, veins, blobs of whatever.  Hell is high school.