Two weeks ago, your dear co-editor-in-chief found himself rather miffed. As you might be aware, I am an avowed opponent of that weekly imprisonment that some call “Morning Meeting”, and we had not one, but two of them the first week of school. Nothing against the speakers themselves… but boy, do I have a lot of supplemental essays to write.
(What you might not know is that I am also the leader of the Front de Libération des Réunions (FLR), the Front for Liberation from Meetings — not to be confused with our sworn enemy, the Meeting Liberation Front. We meet at the GetGo by the light of the full moon. Pizza provided. Vive la révolution.)
Much of great importance is communicated at Morning Meeting, but there is rarely an announcement that could not have been made via email. Our nation’s productivity growth has already suffered too much to sustain such an irresponsible allocation of time, though I suppose one could argue we are being well-prepared for a future no doubt plagued by an overabundance of meetings.
However. However. Our beloved (and I say that without even one ounce of insincerity) Dr. Gough brought new hope to our dreary dystopia with a valuable lesson in integrity. Coming to the stage and abutted by speakers that I must say I fail to recall, Dr. Gough explained the terms of a deal he had made with a certain Austin Lenhardt-Barley. Two years ago, he promised the AP European History classes, for which he was the teacher, that if the average AP score on the exam was four or higher, he would shave his head.
Alas, that did not come to pass, and Dr. Gough was left to continue growing out a head of hair which, this year, matured into a truly magnificent form, resembling the Lorax in all of the best ways (which, I suppose, is only fitting, given that he is teaching his inaugural Environmental History course).
But last year, as Dr. Gough revealed at this anomalously fantastic morning meeting, the illustrious AP United States History class, of which I was a member, succeeded where the Euro students failed and achieved an average well above the four threshold. A true man of integrity, Dr. Gough announced that he would fulfill his pledge, and at 12:30 PM the following Friday, he would commence with the shaving of his head.
I have never heard such loud cheering in our sardine-packed auditorium (about class sizes, you can expect to hear more from me in a later writing). And I, dear reader, found myself in a state of mind I have not felt at Morning Meeting since Mr. Bachner’s masterful oratory performance last year (IYKYK): happiness. I even looked up from my Hemingway novel (A Farewell to Arms, in case you were wondering) for a moment — it was truly a captivating experience, I must say, perhaps even evoking that feeling of community so desired by our well-intentioned organizers.
True to his word, on Friday, on the thirtieth of August in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-four, at 4951 Centre Avenue (aka the Joan Clark Davis Center), Dr. Gough shaved his head. A few APUSH students, myself included, were given the opportunity to get a pass in with the razor. I confess that I found I was rather inept when it came to wielding the barber’s weapon of choice, but Mrs. Cerniglia (apparently a skilled hand from shaving her pet dog) made short work of Dr. Gough’s luscious locks.
As Dr. Gough noted in a pre-shaving address (of much note and to be long remembered), the greatest lesson of the event was actually not his lesson of integrity, but rather that students are, in fact, capable of arriving at the Davis Center on time. Who knew?
(For me personally, the lesson might actually have been that I was momentarily forced, by an abundance of evidence, to retreat from my admittedly stupid and somewhat facetious “community-schmunity” stance. Let me grumble in ignorance.)
