Dear Free State

From: Katie Guyot

Re: Locker Neighbors

Dear lower locker buddy,

Let me begin by apologizing once again for knocking you in the head with my locker door during the first week of school. I’m sure I made quite the first impression. I just hope I didn’t literally make an impression in your skull.

It was a clumsy mistake–you’ll find that I make a lot of those. In fact, I’ll go ahead and apologize in advance for any future head-hitting that takes place while our lockers are stacked on top of each other.

I promise, it’s not because I’m biased against freshmen. The girl who passed that floor-level locker on to you is a year older than I am, and I managed to bump into, trip over or otherwise irritate her between third and fourth hour every day for two years. Once, I even dropped a binder on her head.

(Courtney, if you’re out there: I am so, so sorry about that. I’m still not sure how it slipped out of my hands. My math notes must have been denser than I suspected.)

I don’t think I ever formally introduced myself to Courtney. I heard her name through eavesdropped conversations during locker pit stops, and unless she eavesdropped on me, too, she probably knew me only as the klutzy kid for whom “don’t operate heavy machinery” should have meant “don’t wear a backpack.” I think I rammed into her with that a few times, too.

That’s not to say we didn’t talk. In fact, we set a daily conversational routine from day one: I would say, “Sorry,” to which she would reply, “It’s okay.” We got along quite well that way.

I wonder, sometimes, if other locker neighbors have more detailed discussions about their lives and souls, like college roommates, or if instead we all live in a feudalistic society in which the top lockers house the lords and the bottom lockers belong to the surfs. After all, lower locker owners can always be found bowing at the feet of those above them.

This social hierarchy is determined not by athletic prowess or GPA, but by a simple trick of the alphabet. We all have a 50-50 chance of landing in the upper crust in the Free State hallways. I was lucky. You, lower locker buddy, were not.

I apologize for that, too–for the game of chance that put you at rock (or locker) bottom, for the fact that you’re stuck in that bottom row for four years, and, most of all, for addressing you only as “lower locker buddy” because I don’t know your real name.

I hope you’re reading this, lower locker buddy. Otherwise, you’re going to be incredibly confused when I next see you, since I will be asking you your name and initiating a handshake.

I promise not to bonk you over the head this time.

Thanks for reading, Free State.

Katie