Welcome, freshmen, to your first year at William McKinley Virtual High School. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, we’re committed to providing you with a classic all-American high-school experience—online.
At McKinley Virtual High, education comes first. In math, you will learn the principles of geometry. The four walls of your bedroom form a rectangle. No point in learning the other shapes. For science class, you will engage in the global race for a COVID-19 vaccine. Sure, it’s unlikely that the cure is dog food mixed with Clearasil, but the scientific method says you have to test everything. Except drinking bleach. Science has always known that you can’t drink bleach.
Socially distant P.E. will look a little different. This year, students will have to pummel themselves with dodgeballs. If you wear glasses, you must leave them on. It’s all part of the educational experience. To simulate the locker-room environment, you will split into two Zoom “breakout rooms”—one for girls and one for boys—and get naked. Our lawyers have assured me that this is both legal and a cherished part of high school. For those of you who are self-conscious about your changing bodies, please know this: you are not normal. You are the only one who has ever looked like that. Google “fifteen-year-old boy normal” and you’ll see. In lieu of a school-provided gym uniform, please change into whatever clothes make your body look lumpiest.
While there’s no substitute for the healthy meals prepared in our cafeteria, you can re-create the nutritional profile of a school meal by squirting ketchup on a slice of pound cake.
High school is about social life, too. Even in virtual high school, you will quickly find new friends and establish social circles. But some things will be a little different. Drama kids: though the school’s production of “Our Town” has been cancelled, you’ll be happy to know that all of you got the lead role. Debate team: you will now be holding practice sessions in the reviews section of Amazon.com. (Resolved: the SleepTech 2000 is an imperfect mattress pad.) Goths: your belief that the world is a purposeless wasteland of dysfunction and fear used to set you apart. But, now that we’re all in agreement on that, maybe it’s time to find a new thing—have you tried jogging? Bullies: you’ll have to cope with your parents’ divorces some other way. Popular kids: don’t worry, even through the small window into your lives which a Webcam provides we can still tell that you’re rich. Stoners: as you were. This is really your time. And, since we won’t be able to find out who would have been that kid whose rolling backpack runs over everyone’s feet, please just raise your hand now. (Thanks, I had a hunch it was you.)
I know that virtual high school must be a disappointment. Many of you had big plans for this year. Some of you were going to find yourselves in detention with students from different backgrounds. After a series of comical misunderstandings and a dance montage, you would have learned to like—maybe even love—one another. This will no longer be possible. Detention will be virtual, too. You will watch a nine-hour video about corn.
One of you was going to be crowned homecoming queen, only to break the tiara into dozens of pieces and share it with the entire class. I cannot emphasize enough how unsanitary that is. Still others were going to connect with an ambitious young English teacher from another walk of life, who would have shown you that poetry is just like rap, and that, through the written word, you could transcend your background. Maybe next year. And, if you were planning to take off your glasses and reveal that you’ve actually been hot the whole time, please sign up for a time slot. When you all do it at the same time it doesn’t work.
As you imagine yourselves stepping through the doors of William McKinley Virtual High, think of our namesake, a President who did not live through the pandemic of 1918, since he was shot in the chest in 1901. What a lucky break.
I can’t wait to see you all at graduation. Maybe. ♦
