HEY! Let’s send a crack team of Steven Sagal, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzennegger, and Secret Squirrel over to Iraq to capture Salami Hussein and then force him to deliver pizzas to Lincoln Hall for the whole year. Just an idea. Now back to our regularly scheduled column.

Last weekend I went out with a group of friends from high school and we sat reminiscing about things you lose when you go to college like homeroom, detention, hall passes, and parking your car without getting a ticket.

Homeroom was the ultimate laugh riot of high school. Where else could you get such fine humor as putting “Kick Me I’m Stoopid” (sic) signs on your teacher’s chair, or throwing paperwads and screaming “We want drugs!” when the scared frosh came in to collect the attendance slip? And of course there was the time-honored classic: the guy who loudly passed gas when the teacher had the room in “absolute silence.”

Homeroom was rivaled by times when the teacher left the classroom (i.e: open invitation for hell to break loose.) One time when our art teacher left for a few minutes, my friends and I took it upon ourselves to lock the door from the inside and throw clay out the window at cars. Then there were substitute teachers that didn’t even have to leave the room in order for you to wreak havoc. One time before the teacher came in, a guy drew a couple having sex all over the board, and the rest of us put a sordid lust letter on her desk signed “Big Rod Ready.”

And have you ever had the teacher who was also the football or basketball coach? You could hold Roman orgies and he’d still be talking to the football players or reading Sports Illustrated at his desk. I had one teacher for social studies who had us read Newsweek every day while he wrote game plans and picked his nose.

Then there was detention, where I lived every Tuesday and Thursday after school. Detention always had its regulars: a bunch of guys with long hair, flannel and black heavy metal shirts. The funniest thing was when one of these guys would talk, and the dean would make him get in the push-up position and his buddies would pelt him with spitballs when the dean wasn’t looking.

Then we talked about the group of girls we used to hang out with. We all went out to parties and hung out in the parking lot of Sub Diggity. These were people who I saw all the time for a good four years of my life, but probably will never see again. They’ve graduated, or are going to school somewhere far away. You never think about never seeing someone again, but time goes by, and people move on. Even the people you have in classes right now will be gone next semester. You may never again see that girl in math who you’ve wanted to talk to, but could never get up the courage to say “hi.”

People come and go quicker than you think. You have to cherish the time you have with them. And as always, until next time, be casual.