Welcome, everyone. I appreciate you gathering with me today to celebrate the life and times of the second-funniest thing to come from the school bathroom.
Their deaths were untimely and unfortunate, but their spirits will be with us every time we relieve ourselves.
Thank you for joining me in the memorial of the custom bathroom passes.
Starting at the beginning of the school year, new school policies were introduced to students, one of which requires us to bring a pass with us when walking to the restroom.
While the traditional passes are PHS-themed sticky note-sized sheets of paper that teachers fill out the date, location and signature on, almost every teacher decided to make one or two passes that were specifically made for students to bring to the restroom.
This way teachers don’t have to stop their class to fill out an SAT’s worth of answers, they can just tell you to grab a bathroom pass on your way out of the room.
Because there are no established rules for these custom passes, some teachers got really creative with theirs before official ones came in to replace them at the beginning of the year.
So, just for you, dear reader, I searched the school top-to-bottom in hopes of finding the most … unique hall passes out there.
And I did not leave empty-handed.
- Wooden plank apocalypse
You ever go to Home Depot, look at the wooden planks and are like “Wow. I would KILL to take that into the school bathroom”?
Who am I kidding, who doesn’t think that?
There are a TON of these wooden planks that I can only assume teachers looked at and were like “Yeah, I’m sure no other teachers will think of THIS!” Then came back and realized everyone else had the same idea.
Here I have a pretty basic one – nothing too special. I’ve seen some really goofy ones sitting outside bathrooms and poor students lugging around really big pieces of wood while on their ways to the bathroom, but most are just like this: wood.
As you can see, this one in particular wasn’t made by a teacher. Seniors Danny Stefanek (seen in photo) and Nick Andrews made the pass and donated it to Room 200 for anyone to use.
While the wood is … cool, I guess, I can’t help but think of how much of a pain in the butt it must be. I mean, everything on this list is inconvenient to carry, but what about splinters? I’m pretty sure getting into too much detail would get me kicked off staff, but what if you get a splinter in your finger from the wood, and then that splinter gets … transferred while wiping or something? What a nightmare!
Luckily, this fear is irrational. While the wood is an option (if you really want to take it with you), traditional bathroom passes are available in Room 200. Sure, they’re not as fun, but go ahead and tell me you prefer the risk of splinters in your [REDACTED] over just throwing a sheet of paper in your pocket.
You don’t? No way!
- An artistic masterpiece
What does it mean to be art? How do you create something that is seen as masterful to the masses? How can something be timeless, abstract and beautiful while also being relatable to its viewers? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that this-
this does all of that.
Once again we see the man responsible, special education teacher Peter King, as well as his divine taste in artwork. I shouldn’t need to explain why this is perfect, but I will anyway. I’ll go over every minute detail and every elegancey that pushes this piece to perfection, a true deconstruction of the masterpiece.
It’s a dog dressed as Micheal Jackson.
- Next level desk-carving
You know how in middle school, during the most boring class of your day, you’d take out a pencil and doodle on your desk? Or maybe you were one of those vandals who actually carved into it with scissors, who still scare me. Either way, Math and Education Pathway teacher Mike Riedy’s hall pass should speak to you.
No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is indeed the top of a desk meticulously carved to have the words “Hall Pass” ingrained on it. Oh, and don’t worry about splinters up your [REDACTED]. Since it’s literally a desk, the material is smooth enough to prevent any accidents.
And yes, you do have to lug this thing to the restroom every time your business needs to be done.
As for where to put this thing when you do eventually haul it over, I’m not sure, and frankly, I don’t think I want to know considering how I touched it multiple
times while I was over there.
That’s a big issue with a lot of these. As fun as they are to look at, functionally they falter in pretty much every way possible.
But that shouldn’t prevent us from looking back at these with a mixture of fondness and gratitude … even if it is gratitude for them being gone.
