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MAILING : P.O. Box 8, Los Olivos, CA 93441
Pride in a Job Well Done
Fall 2019
Midland School: where oaks and a successful Thanksgiving meal mean more than a homecoming game.
The irony is that we don’t have a homecoming game, or even a football team. But, we do have seventy teammates to ease the 500-person influx on T-day. No caterers or hired help, just us. Included in our powerhouse school, we have a farming team, multiple bathroom clean-up crews, and a starting line-up of dishwashers, all of which I have proudly been a part of.
Our teams may not win sets or make baskets, but that’s because we have a more elusive goal. Our aim is to tackle grease and touch down on grimy surfaces begging to be wiped clean. The offense’s equipment consists of spray bottles and brooms. Defenders include that dried maple syrup on the counter or that painfully stuck, grain of rice under the back corner of the table.
We have no scoreboard to check our performance, only mental pictures of what our space looked like before we started and ones of how we know it should look when we finish. These images of a perfect game and a thoughtless defeat are handed down from senior captains to their dedicated teams of scrubbers, sweepers, and planters. Here, a loss looks like a pair of clean hands. Dust mischievously perched in the corners and rags left out as though a servant will come and pick them up defines our failures. Victory is a sopping wet apron, a sparkling floor, and the exhaustion that comes with doing the whole job and an extra ten percent.
Although I cannot take pride in my athletic conquests, I can take pride in the fact that I know what it means to work hard and work until the task is done.
By Nate ’20
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