A Mathematics Problem
If nearly 3,000 high school students are evacuated to the high school's grounds 18 times from November through January, for as long as 2 hours per evacuation, how do they pass the time?
*
Looking back after 56 years, I remember some - not all - things about the evacuations quite vividly. Wondering what others might recall, last November I posted a question to the "You Know You're From Hicksville" group on Facebook. I thank the many former HHS students who replied.
It came as no surprise that the novelty of being extricated from class wore thin quickly, especially if the alternative was standing around in cold weather. Regardless, though, people tried to cope.
Had a sociologist interviewed all of us at the time, s/he might have found enough fodder for a Masters thesis. Our evacuation points were based on our locker locations, which were determined by our homeroom locations, which in turn were determined by the combination of our class (Senior, Junior, or Sophomore) and the alphabetic order of our surnames. Thus, during a bomb scare, although we were free to socialize with the other students at our designated location, many of them were unknown to us. The routine's repetitions gave us a chance to form new social groups ("bomb scare acquaintances"), which tended to gather at the same spot in each evacuation.
*
One thing mentioned by a number of people on Facebook was the cold. Evacuations on cold days were especially trying for some people, because of their personal routines. For example, it normally took me only two minutes to walk from 188 7th St. to the high school - which meant that I rarely wore a warm coat, even in winter. And so, I got to spend eighteen evacuations wearing a light wind-breaker, shivering and gazing at the rooftop of my warm house. In a similar circumstance were students whose parents drove them to/from school, and those who drove themselves to school (there were not very many) and also happened to be evacuated to the lot in which they had parked their cars.
Because I was always cold, and because I eventually had nothing else to do, after several bomb evacuations I decided to dance while I waited to go back inside. Well, not quite. One day, with the little student parking lot full of shivering people, someone had the bright idea of breaking out in song - specifically, Hava Nagila. Immediately, a ring of male and female students formed, singing together and dancing. Of course, I had heard the song, but I knew neither the words nor the steps (alas, I could never find it in the hymnals at Holy Family parish). I watched. Steps? Not a problem. I tentatively wedged myself into the circle, and began dancing with people whom I did not know.
As time went by, the weather got still colder, the bomb scares continued, and I danced in a lot of horas. By the time the final bomb threat evacuated us, I could sing all of Hava Nagila phonetically.
***
