Last week, I watched some of the travelogues from my UK Tour (available on my YouTube Channel). One of my favorite videos is from the Tower of London, where Peter and I encounter wall graffiti that is 500+ years old. It's carved in stone. I know they were traitors and theives, mostly, but it's cool to see "Robert wuz here 1412," you know?
I got a text from my neighbor last week. She goes to my old high school (Atherton), and she was exploring the stage there when she found my name scrawled ... in multiple areas. With a name like mine, it's hard to deny that I did it.
Let me explain that I am not a vandal. I just did a lot of theatre there, and it was tradition to sign your name once for every show you did. My junior year, the theatre arts teacher created a new tradition and painted a small square for each production where the cast would "graffiti" their names, hoping to contain and bring some order to the chaos. I guess forty years of paint-your-name-in-the-dungeon was catching up, and the changing areas looked like a 1980s subway stop. We didn't like it at first, but at least it kept each cast together and looked pretty.
Apparently there's a new theatre-arts teacher now. I don't know who it is, but my high-school-student-neighbor tells me there are plans to paint over ALL of the old names. I'm sure it would look much better, but I hate the idea of just whitewashing history. Maybe I should go ahead and get really famous so the administration will think it's a bad idea to paint over my autographs-of-yore. I mean, I paid $35 to see the Tower of London graffiti. If I get famous enough, Atherton could make a lot of money off those dungeon tours.
I got a text from my neighbor last week. She goes to my old high school (Atherton), and she was exploring the stage there when she found my name scrawled ... in multiple areas. With a name like mine, it's hard to deny that I did it.
Let me explain that I am not a vandal. I just did a lot of theatre there, and it was tradition to sign your name once for every show you did. My junior year, the theatre arts teacher created a new tradition and painted a small square for each production where the cast would "graffiti" their names, hoping to contain and bring some order to the chaos. I guess forty years of paint-your-name-in-the-dungeon was catching up, and the changing areas looked like a 1980s subway stop. We didn't like it at first, but at least it kept each cast together and looked pretty.
Apparently there's a new theatre-arts teacher now. I don't know who it is, but my high-school-student-neighbor tells me there are plans to paint over ALL of the old names. I'm sure it would look much better, but I hate the idea of just whitewashing history. Maybe I should go ahead and get really famous so the administration will think it's a bad idea to paint over my autographs-of-yore. I mean, I paid $35 to see the Tower of London graffiti. If I get famous enough, Atherton could make a lot of money off those dungeon tours.
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