Shake on It!

30 January 2012Anna B

Sometimes, living at school is like being trapped in a perpetual kindergarten class. When I was little, I believed after the day was done and my mom picked me up at 12:30, my teacher would remain in the classroom – it was his home. After all, teachers lived at school, didn’t they? Desks seemed like pretty good beds, there was a boys’ bathroom down the hall and a Fisher-Price kitchen set in the play area; he had everything he needed, right there in the classroom.

Of course, I realized this was not the way the world worked the first time I saw my teacher at the grocery store. I was aghast. He went shopping, just like my mom and dad? Unbelievable. The elements of the classroom were finding their way into life outside of school, and in my six-year-old mind, I was only starting to learn that teachers went home at night, and check-out ladies didn’t live under the cash register.

Now, to six-year-old me, the suites attached to boarding houses would have probably caused no end of confusion. At Brentwood, it’s almost like kindergarten all over again. Though they have their own (fully-functioning, non-plastic) kitchens and don’t sleep on the desks, teachers do live here; we keep blankets and pillows at school (I was very fond of nap time as a kid); we even get cookies and juice at break-time.

Although the parallels are easily drawn, the one element of kindergarten that undeniably appears in Brentwood life is the secret handshake.

I had multiple handshakes as a kid: the spit-shake, the high-five-on-the-side-down-below-too-slow shake, a badly-reproduced version of Hally and Annie’s handshake in Parent-Trap. I knocked elbows as a form of greeting – I even added sound effects. I moved my hands like fish swimming through water, like a Jedi performing a mind trick. So I thought, anyways. They were deadly-secret, but I couldn’t wait to share them with anyone I met.

It must be a side-effect of living so close to the people we go to school with (the sense of childish camaderie, the close-quarters, the fierce loyalty to one house or another) because, even though the youngest of us are still nine years older than we were in kindergarten, secret handshakes crop up everywhere.

There are handshakes between roommates, ranging from the simple high five to a complex series of finger-snapping, palm-slapping, super-sonic movements. There are handshakes within houses – Privett’s is noteworthy, ending, after a succession of complicated maneuverings of the hands, with a proud and defiant P formed on the chest by the index finger and thumb. Between certain teachers and student there are handshakes and chest bumps galore.

If you are reading this without any knowledge of the vast underground system of shakes at Brentwood, I have one word for you: secret. It is half of the name. They are covert, and uneasily shared (believe me), and the only way to become a part of this culture is to submerge yourself fully into the world of the secret-shake, and form everlasting bonds with your partners in manual dexterity.

So if your AP classes and university applications start making you feel older than you are at heart, if you miss the blithe days of kindergarten, if you even just need a secret to share – you are in the perfect place, and a handshake is only a couple of hand-movements away. Annie B

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