Chalk the Lot: A Tradition Violated

There always seem to be a bit of an air of excitement on the first day of school. New year, new you, as the cliché goes. Most kids walk around with confidence. Freshmen walk around in confusion. There are new clothes and fashionable backpacks and fresh haircuts galore. But when I pulled into the parking lot at 7:25 a.m. and the sky was that dismally overcast gray, I should have known that something was amok.

As soon as I started pulling my car down that first line of spots, I let out a little scream of frustration. Someone had stolen my parking spot!
For those who scoff and think, “Why is this even important? How could someone steal your parking spot? It’s not like you wrote your name on it,” you’re very, very wrong.

In fact, I had written my name, first and last, along with various personalized illustrations, in legible chalk two days prior at the annual chalking of the senior spots. In blazing heat and rough conditions, I had slaved and toiled for over an hour in personalizing a spot that I hoped would be mine for the rest of the school year.

So the fact that some Joe-Blow driver had swiped my spot even before the year had officially begun left a foul taste in my mouth. The driver must have seen the drawings in my spot and in the spots around me. I believe it reasonable that the average person would understand that this parking space was off limits. They might think it courteous to park five spots over or in the empty and un-chalked spots across from my parking space. But they didn’t. My blood boils.

At first, I didn’t really understand why I was so upset. This was just a parking spot, something marginal, unimportant. But now I think I understand why it set me off.

Senior chalking isn’t a mild SDA event. It’s a senior tradition, something to kick off the start of what many claim to be the most memorable year of high school. Staring at the car, I realized that the word “memorable” doesn’t always need to have a positive connotation. A million ideas flew across my mind: leave a nasty note, make my friend park really close to their car so they can’t get in their car door, even chalk three more spots so there would at least be one to claim as my own.

The kicker might have been that I was not the only senior whose spot had been stolen. I heard at least five other seniors grumbling on their way to the Mosaic to pick up their schedules. And I’m sure that there were a few more kids that had to find new places to park. So at least six people had actively ignored the senior tradition and started the year off wrong. That’s at least six seniors starting their senior year in a grumpy mood.
I understand that times have changed. During my freshman year, not only did seniors get their own spots, they got their own lot as well. But now, thanks to construction and overpopulation, the main lot is completely packed, and the overflow lot up by the 120s is approaching a similar capacity. So the fact that juniors and the occasional sophomore are parking in the lower lot isn’t completely unwarranted. However, juniors parking in reserved senior spots, even chalking their own spots, is excessive.

There’s been talk at SDA that the magic spirit of acceptance that the school has always sported is dissipating. And I don’t know, maybe these lengths I’m jumping to are a bit too far to reach. But I do think that the seniors last year didn’t spend much of their time enriching the school spirit. No, instead they hosed down parking spaces, they barely pulled off tepid senior pranks, and generally didn’t contribute to the environment. Worse yet, they were the ones to lament that the school spirit was dying. So maybe the toxic environment I can feel festering can’t be blamed totally on the underclassmen, or the juniors. It’s collected like toxic rainwater over an elongated period of time, and it’s eroding away at the school.

This year we need to dump it out. I think we can do that by preserving and protecting current traditions like spot chalkings, the Forum, and the Stang Gang. We can do that by revitalizing old traditions like senior pranks and community day. We can do that by actively participating and creating new traditions to enrich the culture. We need to show the freshman something to aspire to, give them goals and excitement for the future, like I and other seniors experienced. There’s so much growing that SDA can do, and there’s always the ability to make room.