Lanyards

As of Thursday, January 28, I have successfully managed to abstain myself to succumbing to the austere decrees of Daviess County High School’s incumbency. My devious ingenuity allowed me to stealthily steer clear of the potential dangers of not having an ID which present themselves in most every corner of Daviess County High School. I deem that I should be entitled to some trophy or reward of some type to compensate for the effort I exerted into averting from these threats. I now belong to an elite group of individuals who, like I, have managed to thwart Daviess County by going a day without a lanyard.

Daviess County is staffed by a bountiful number of teachers, some kindhearted (especially that Mrs. Gunter woman) some not, who fail to identify their students without this caustic ornament. A student can be besties with their first block teacher, but had that student left the plastic barcode slip from memory that Monday morning, the teacher suddenly loses sight of who you are and where you came from. One mistake and your teacher has already taken you off his/her top 8 on Myspace. But once you return the lanyard on, they are once more able to recall who you are. It makes sense, right?

The administration claims the purpose of this futile accessory is to ensure that teachers are able to identify students in the halls and crop out those who aren’t enrolled at the school. It is also implied that lanyards are a defense mechanism against school shootings by preventing those without an ID (in other words, those not attending classes at DCHS) from getting inside the school. However, if an individual did have intentions of causing harm, and he was lugging around an AK-47 around the Math hall, do you really think a teacher is going to say, “Hey young man, where is your ID?” No. If an adult who was walking through the halls had a 9 mm. stashed in his pocket and someone asked if he obtained his visitor pass, is he going to say “Oh, how silly of me!” or is he going to busting some caps? In the reality of things, if you conjure any scenario pertaining to a situation such as this, the person with bad intentions is going to use force anyways.

It was playing out like any other Thursday; I picked up Aeriel, got to school, found out what homework I didn’t do, found out what homework I did do but didn’t need to do and made it to class, when Mr. Mason said over announcements: “Let’s have a dress code check and an ID check.” I looked down. It wasn’t there! As any other human being would, my head looked around to see who else was in the same predicament. I though, could it be? Unfortunately my wolf pack only consisted of me as a lone wolf in the pack, who had forgotten his ID. Scared I looked down at some random page in my book, acting as though I was working diligently, caught up in a deep reading pertaining to the Anglo-Saxon period. Success! The substitute failed to acknowledge my fault. If it were any other day, I would have volunteered to go buy an ID, because I’m proudly close to breaking the record for the most bought IDs. But on this particular Thursday I had no money.

It’s a shame that students have to add something so insignificant to their list of things to remember in the morning. On a personal level, it’s not easy to look as good as I do in the mornings, so I find it hard to remember things so insignificant in the scheme of things. Between lanyards and IDs, I’ve easily spent over $100, which is absolutely ridiculous. It’s petty things such as these which contribute to a hard knock life.