Senior girls shout: “Honk 4 Seniors!

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September 5, 2008
by Susie Pender

There is an irrepressible Greeley tradition that captures, for just a moment—well, for the half hour before the first bell sounds on the first day of school—the camaraderie, spirit and boisterous excitement of becoming a senior at Greeley. All those years of hard work, perhaps an entire lifetime spent in the Chappaqua Central School District, culminate in this day, the day the senior girls celebrate the coming of age of the Greeley class of 2009.

The build-up starts on Tuesday evening at the Senior Barbeque, hosted by the parents’ committee of the senior class and held under the canopy running from the front door of the school to the entrance to the cafeteria. New seniors decorate the windows of the senior section of the cafeteria with their names in orange and blue paint, while others head to the parking lot to decorate their car windows for their grand entrance into the seniors’ only parking lot the next day. Back windshields and side windows shout clever, sometimes nonsensical, slogans: “Yay Seniors; I Harry Potter; Kiss My Class!” to list a few.

Around 7:00 a.m. the next morning, under a brilliant rising sun and perfect blue sky, over 125 girls (at least half of the girls in the 2009 class) gathered on the medians of Roaring Brook Road and the sidewalks of the high school driveway, clad in shorts and shimmering blue and orange t-shirts with “SENIORS” emblazoned on the front, and their individual last names and “09” on the back. This team’s equipment bag was bare bones: posters, plastic megaphones and loud voices.

“Honk for seniors, honk for seniors,” they screamed as they held their posters aloft and jumped up and down. As parents, students and teachers drove into the entrance to Greeley every honk for the seniors was greeted with a new wave of appreciative screaming and leaping. A peek inside the cars revealed silly grins spread across the faces of many adults, who couldn’t help but be caught up in the excitement of this shared experience as well. Who can ever forget the thrill of making it to the top of the heap in high school?

As time moved inexorably toward the first bell, the girls started to glance at their watches, the decibel level declined somewhat and clumps of blue and orange shirts separated from the group and headed down the driveway to school. The moment was over. Time to start being seniors.

Copyright 2008 NewCastleNOW.org