My sophomore year of high school could not be more perfect. I had been dating a senior boy for over a year and made the varsity cheerleading squad. Every game day, the other cheerleaders and myself would give the varsity players a bag of candy or some kind of gift. It always felt awkwardly uncomfortable approaching the upper classmen. Silently and shyly I would come up to the teammate hand them their gift bag and quickly move in the opposite direction.
One afternoon during practice our âÃÂÃÂCaptainâÃÂàgot the bright idea of decorating the boyâÃÂÃÂs lockers room before the big homecoming game. The other girls did not like the idea much either, but they hesitantly agreed. After discussing if we were even allowed to decorate the locker room with the football coaches, we set out to various party supply stores and stocked up on purple, yellow, and white streamers, balloons, and construction paper.
As soon as school let out at three oâÃÂÃÂclock on Friday, we all did what we needed to do for the game except change into our uniforms. When we were all ready to go, we waited for the football players to leave the locker room. Once the room was empty, we all went inside and started to decorate. After half an hour we had purple, yellow, and white streamers across the room, balloons everywhere, and a magnificently huge banner with the words âÃÂÃÂGo Tigers, Beat Those BulldogsâÃÂÃÂ, across it.
We were all standing in the back of the gym room admiring the decorating job; we were all commenting on how they might actually win a game for once, that we had not noticed the football players re-entering the room. When my best friend Kim decided to pants me; for one reason or another I did not understand.