Smithsonian
I love to tell people who will still listen about my high school class trips back in the day. Mostly, they were made up of scheduled trips to local Venture Stores for the usual collection of September’s pens, pencils and notebook paper and unscheduled stops to the corner convenience store for soda and Cheetos. But in truth, we actually did have a real senior class trip.
Legend had it the Latin teacher sold his soul to make it happen, though I now believe it was more of a conspiracy theory. It was determined the man never had a soul after forcing us to translate Kennedy’s inauguration address into the language of Cicero. But there was a rumor he could have stolen several souls from my friends when we robbed the library of last year’s translation stuffed between the pages of Catcher in the Rye Cliff Notes. The man literally set the classroom ablaze with Latin translations when the papers came due, every single one identical to the next. So, a few lost souls may have been just the right payment for the cheating scandal, which were no doubt passed along to the devil himself.
But there we were, bags packed and acting like 8-year-olds on a Boeing 727 headed toward Washington, D.C. We ran up the 896 stairs to the top of the Washington Monument to look out a window smaller than the 727’s, fought each other to be the first to sit on Lincoln’s lap for pictures at the other end of the Reflecting Pool, and watched open-mouthed as a Marine guard threatened to shoot a student off a concrete barrier near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Full story here:
Thank you for reposting, Richard!