Here Comes the Sun

Man, has my week been crazy. And beautiful. I've been looking forward to homecoming senior year for a while, but for different reasons than what actually happened. For example, I assumed that we, as seniors, would win the week-long spirit competition. That's just the way things are. But juniors won, which is, I must say, pretty horrible, considering they're already as cocky as anything, sitting in the commons and the like. At the time, however, no one cared, because right after they announced that, they announced homecoming king and queen. And Aashesh Verma was king.

I've been friends with Aashesh since sixth or seventh grade, and he's always been the awkward, adorably nervous Indian boy. The last few years in high school, Aashesh has become the icon of our class in the Academy, as Asians often do (e.g., Deepu Reddy for the class of '04), and last year Steering Committee made "Aashizzle" buttons that featured awkward little Aashesh in ghetto poses, wearing the ultimate Aashesh shirt, that red polo shirt with stripes. (If you know Aashesh, you know what I'm talking about.)

On Monday, all the English classes had to vote for homecoming court. Without any real organized effort, just about every Academy student, even several that don't really know him, voted for Aashesh, and he got on court. We were all excited, and tried to get everyone to vote for him for king. It was exciting even to have him on court; when they had all the class delegates walk in at the pep assembly, Aashesh was wearing a suit, a sight I'd never thought I'd see. I was privileged to be right up there both at the pep rally and at the game when they announced the winners, since I was taking photos for the school newspaper. I also got to hang out with Aashesh and his mass of groupies, several of which had painted their faces half black and half red (school colors) and had painted on their stomachs letters spelling out AASHESH and on their backs THE KING. Aashesh confided to me before half-time that he already knew he'd won, so the moment leading up to the announcement was one of happy anticipation for me, and I went crazy when they announced it, jumping up and down and screaming. I mean, it's a fairly big deal for an Academy kid to even be on court, let alone be KING, and here's this little Indian boy taking it away from these big, macho football players. Ross Makulec's mom said she overheard someone saying, "Who? Oh, must be one of those Academy kids." The perfection of the moment is indescribable.

Aashesh's place on court and eventual announcement as king colored the whole week, but it was pretty fun besides that, too. On Wednesday, I got to skip physics (yes!) for the senior panoramic picture. Standing on crowded, rickety bleachers, staring into the hot sun, wasn't great, but once the picture was over, we got to hang out on the lawn for a half hour or so until the end of the hour; the administration didn't want us distracting the ongoing classes (in the past, seniors have yelled their class number and banged on lockers). My friends and I regressed to our childhoods with hand-clapping games ("Miss Susie had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell, Miss Susie went to heaven, the steamboat went to hell-o operator...") and memories of elementary school, as well as cheering wildly whenever our names went by on the digital sign for being National Merit Semifinalists (it was the first time I'd seen my name on the sign, so I was pretty excited). Then, when the bell rang and they let us back in the school, we screamed and yelled and clapped and made it difficult for underclassmen to get to class. It was undoubtedly a senior milestone.

Taste of Auburn, when all the clubs sell food at little booths and each class presents their lip-sync performance, is usually my favorite event, but this year it wasn't great. I had some good food and hung out with some fun people, but lip-sync was sad. For one thing, it was completely off to the side instead of smack in the middle of things, like it has been in past years, so a lot of people didn't even realize it was going on at first. The freshmen were cute; they did a song from Wicked, which goes with the Wizard of Oz theme, but that's just not what lip-sync is. The sophomores didn't have anything, and the juniors and seniors both had typical rap music-and-booty dancing performances. The seniors were disqualified for being inappropriate, so the juniors won. When I got home, I found that none of my pictures for newspaper had turned out. I'd noticed that they were extremely light, and had asked Tyler if he knew how to fix it; he told me after messing with it that the pictures should be adjustable on the computer. Well, they weren't. I was pretty upset, but I got enough pictures at Powderpuff, the pep assembly, and the game to fill four pages of the newspaper, so I'm okay now.

Powderpuff was, as usual, hot and crowded and smelly, being in the gym. The relay races featuring girls were pretty nondescript, and I got no good pictures of them. The male cheerleading, as usual, was entertaining. The freshmen--a bunch of nerdy kids like Siva Sundaram, Michael Jiang, Tobi Odusanya, Christian Zarnke, and Brian Bai--were dorky and awkward and got booed off, although they all told me later that they'd had funny stuff later, but couldn't finish their routine. I really like this year's freshmen; I've gotten to know many of them through Key Club, Quiz Bowl, and/or my TA hour, and most of them seem like sweet, funny kids. So far, they're much less pretentious and annoying than the sophomores or juniors, and I hope they stay that way. The sophomores were initially disqualified but appealed; they were really good dancers, although there were only four of them. The juniors were also good dancers, but I thought their routine was fairly generic: breakdancing, acrobatics, etc. Acknowledging my prejudice, I really thought the seniors were good. We had a huge group, who wore actual cheerleading outfits; they did little cheerleading things, like the "Alligator, alligator, eat 'em up, eat 'em up" cheer, which was funny, and then there was Brian Yi. Another small, skinny Asian, although he acts cool all the time, as opposed to Aashesh, who usually just looks confused. But when he started dancing...all the senior girls were floored. He was really good! He had a big solo and everything. It was exciting. Chris Yoon, often paired with Brian as Brian'n'Chris since they used to be together constantly, was also a male cheerleader, but luckily he was just as goofy and clumsy as always. I mean, I don't think I could take the shock of both of the Koreans being secretly awesome in one day.

Throughout the week there was also the whole saga of the days' themes. Last year, seniors wore togas on Friday of homecoming week. This year, they made Toga Day for everyone on Tuesday. In addition, they switched the colors for Class Colors Day, so that seniors were red and juniors were black instead of the other way around, which is what it's been for the past few years. Several seniors were mad, and some of them plotted to wear black on Toga Day and togas on Class Colors Day. As it turned out, most people just ended up wearing togas on Toga Day, and on Class Colors Day they wore red shirts that said "Red is the new black." It was funny, and it got a little rebellion in there without being too mean to the Student Council people who came up with the different days.

On Friday before the game, Maureen and I went to Key Club, and then we went out on the lawn and ordered pizza for the band kids who didn't have time to go out to eat between the meeting and the time they were supposed to get dressed and gather to practice marching. I hung out with Christian Zarnke for a while (he dropped hints that he wants a senior girl to ask him to Turnabout; quite a change from the Phil fiasco, don't you think?), and then when the band kids went inside I was talking to Will Mulford, Michael Jiang, and Kalah Polsean, all nice kids. If there's one word to describe Will, it's flamboyant. But he's fun to talk to; I can get along with him better than some of the other guys like that at Auburn. Michael's a bit grating after a while; he's just all over the place and into everything. For example, he came up to me while I was chatting with Christian and asked to zip my sweater. Uh, what? And he always has a camera with him; he takes pictures of everything. Yes, everything. He's sweet, though. Kalah is probably the nicest girl I've ever met, but she has a personality, too, and you never get the feeling she secretly thinks you're weird.

I suppose I'd better get some homework done. Tonight's the dance; I still have to figure out where we're eating and who exactly is in my "group." April, Sonya, and Ellen are givens, since they're the group I planned to go with since the summer, and then there's Maureen and her date, Syed, and their friend Imran, and Emily, who's going to tag along and take pictures for the paper, and Gloria and Adam, who are going together but don't know whether they're joining us (Gloria's too good for our at-one-time choice of Fazoli's, it seems), and Ross, who just decided, like, yesterday that he was going, and might go with Gloria and Adam if they go somewhere else, seeing as he's friends with them more than with me. So we'll see. The important thing is that I have my dress. And it is pretty. Yep.