#ilovefrank

[viriviryy]

Cuando te vi me enamoré y tu sonreíste porque lo sabías

William Shakespeare

[franciscoqdelgado]

My high school, Canandaigua Academy. Also the first place where I worked after my I got my bachelor's (I was a TA from 2005-2007). 

Fun facts: there's a little entrance room through the front doors there, where there used to be wooden benches. After cross-country practice, I would sit on those benches, waiting for my sister to pick me up (I'd wait sometimes for an hour - a story for another time), and read the messages someone etched in the wood. One read "I love Frank V." I used to wonder who this other "Frank" was. I used to cover up the "V" so it just read "I Love Frank" and pretend that this "Frank" was me.

Those four windows on the second floor (the ones to the right, being partially occluded by the lamppost) was where I had Global Studies. I remember listening to the histories and myths of places that were previously just names on a map, daydreaming of these elsewheres that all seemed so strange and far away and beautiful all of a sudden...

Not so fun facts: Canandaigua Academy is also where a string of weird teacher-student interactions have recently gone down. In 2010, a Special Ed teacher (with whom I worked as a TA) was busted for exchanging inappropriate texts (among other things) with a student. A year later, a TA repeated this mistake with another student. And then in late 2012, a Spanish teacher was caught with a student in a grocery store parking lot. 

I found all of this out after googling my hometown (which I do on occasion, perhaps due to homesickness, Stockholm Syndrome?). I'm trying to write a story about one of these elicit affairs - from the student's perspective, at least ten years after the fact. The main character's now an unremarkable working adult, still living in the same place, when another teacher-student scandal occurs at his old high school. About 1,000 words into it now, no ending in sight. Still in the feeling-out process.

Something you don't learn in high school is that your hometown, while boring and unremarkable to you, is still part of the world at large (and so a part of someone else's "Global Studies" course somewhere).

I write to keep in touch with my hometown (for better or worse, the only one I'll ever have).

I sometimes google.

I remember.

Writing is kind of a burden. As is the love one feels for one's hometown.

Here's to both. 

[crazyinthahead]

Here's what I learned: That love is about all the changes you make and not just three small words.

The Way I Tend To Be - Frank Turner

[candiexxo]

Glad someone can point that out! #ilovefrank