Imagine, if you can, spending the majority of your life attending a certain academy. Here, you've done more than learn; you've created the character of yourself, you've met companions, you've worked hard and overcome many challenges, you've learned how "the system" of it all works. You're a veteran.
This is how I feel about my middle school. With the acronym S.M.S. forever reserving a peculiar space in my mind, the low-budget Catholic school truly made an impression on me. I went through ten, long years (pre-school, kindergarten, then grades 1 to 8) of waking up earlier than I would've chosen and trudging off to school at this brick building. One thing about it, though, has continued to bother me in a way.
Entering high school is a bit interesting for me. My high school coincidentally directly neighbors my middle school. Everyday on the walk home, I look into the fenced-in "playground" of my middle school. Half of it is actually a parking lot, and the rest is modest lawn, its downward slope perfect for rolling down (which I made sure to do in my earlier youth there, not really making the recess supervisors too happy). Even though they took down the now-legendary trees that stood like sentries on either side of the gate's entrance, the playground appeared pretty much the same as it always had. I'm always overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia, thinking of the great - and not so great - times I had experienced on those grounds.
Yet, the thought of "you hated that place" usually pops up, as well. To be honest, S.M.S. had become synonymous with "shithole" to me and many of my friends. I could write an entire novel about the shortcomings and less-than-perfect aspects of the old place, but at the moment, I'll just state that it was a low-quality venue. But, if it was such a lowly establishment, what would possess me to long for it?
As being a veteran of S.M.S., I feel I have the right to compare the school to a dog. Looking back, I believe it was very much like a mutt, even though I've personally never owned a canine. Don't dismiss this immediately, because I can explain.
What if a dog followed you home one day? If you don't have a fear of dogs, or if the animal simply doesn't intimidate you, you might want to "keep" it, correct? But what if you had to keep it? No problem; you like the dog. But what if you didn't like the dog? What if it was a possibly-rabid, flea-infested dog with a limp? This roughed-up mutt trails you until you arrive home, and it stares at you expectantly before your unsure hand turns the doorknob of your front door. You must keep this thing — wonderful. You don't know why, but you must.
Now, S.M.S. is like the dog to me. Its not very attractive to stay around, and not too enjoyable overall. However, some urge forced me to stay at the school for ten years, even after my parents repeatedly offered for me to switch schools (damn tuition). Yes, my friends were there, but that wasn't the sole reason I remained. The educational establishment was a part of me, much like the canine.
You accept the idiotic dog into your home. It had the courage to follow you home; you feel like The Chosen One. Then again, maybe the only reason it followed you was because you didn't kick it aside like everyone else. Either way, there's now a bond between the dog and you. If you lost the little thing, you'd feel horrible.
Now, as I ascended the grades of S.M.S., I never really felt like I was progressing. I would be proud that, instead of being a fourth-grader, I'm now a fifth-grader, or I'm now on the top floor with older pupils, instead of the lower floor with the younger students. But, I never usually viewed the long-term goal of graduation. I stumbled through the seemingly endless journey, only trying to go ahead, never truly being satisfied of where I was at the time.
The dog is just there. It is in your life, you tend to it almost on a subconscious level. You continue to try to nurture it as much as you can, while not entirely noticing the graying of its coat, the lack of shine in its eyes. As you perpetually take care of your responsibilities to the mutt, you blind yourself to the inevitable end.
I graduate. The end has come, and no matter how much I attempted to mentally brace for this, it still stings. I have to leave my school behind and never look back? How? How could I tear out half of my heart and leave it on the road and walk on?
The dog is dead. You have dug a hole in the backyard for its final resting spot, but as you shove the gaunt corpse into a damp cardboard box, you cannot place the box in the grave. This mutt meant something to you; how can you just bury it? There is no use in keeping a canine carcass with you, so you see no other option.
You attempt to convince yourself that the thing's death is a positive event. You think of the fact that you will no longer be forced to awake at inhumane hours of the morning just to watch it sprinkle urine all over your lawn, how you will not have to suffer from the dog slobbering on your hands as you eat, how you now have no responsibility to care for the runty animal. However, you find that you regret not leaping out of bed before dawn everyday to spectate the dog's morning bladder-relief ritual. You imagine that you will soon miss having to wipe saliva off of your hands every moment or so throughout dinner. You cannot think up a new way to fill the now-void time spent daily to care for the dog.
Of course, at some point I moved on from S.M.S. I was able to leave it in the dust, but securely keep the experiences I went through at that place in my pocket. Instead of discarding middle school completely, I use the knowledge I gained there, academic and otherwise, as a foundation in high school.
Mustering all of your available willpower, you place the dilapidated box in the bottom of the shallow ditch. Hurriedly, you begin shoveling the dirt onto the cardboard coffin, trying to finish before you change your mind. Once the hole is filled, you gaze upon it with vision that is curiously obscured by a strange watery substance that crowds your eyes.
The animal has been dead for a while now. On the spot in the yard where you buried the body, there are now flowers that were nurtured by the once-salivating dog that lies beneath them. Even after death, the dog has managed to help with something's life. Aesthetic plant growth aside, the runty mutt has also continued to affect you long after its mortal end. In a way that remains unclear to you, the dog taught you why and how to love — why and how to live.