It was a Tuesday in an ordinary school in Motherwell. I was sitting in geography. The teacher prattled on about some irrelevance, ears heard her words but minds took no heed. Rumours had been circulating for weeks. They began as a quaint notion, an off-hand joke to speculate upon. Soon they became stated as a certainty. It was all ending. Abrupt and unceremonious. The sickness had come. The schools must close. The news drifted down the corridors, a growing commotion could be heard from outside. The teacher excused herself from the room to investigate. At the swinging of the door hinges, phones were rustled from pockets. Now it was confirmed. The announcement had been delivered to the Scottish public. It was a school day on the 17th of May 2020. The 20th would be our last.
A strange malaise overtook me. The thin veneer of educational authority which had kept me reluctantly fastened to that creaking plastic chair had been irreparably shattered. Slowly, I stood up, gathered my belongings, and calmly walked out the class. Lining the corridors were chaotic groups of students. Some were joyously revelling, cheering, and singing, ecstatic that their bondage to such a tragically mandatory institution was to be prematurely severed. Some of the girls had broken out into sobs of hysteria. I meandered past, making for the school’s exit. Hands in my pockets, feeling a strong sense of detachment, nothing but a dull ache lingering in the pit of my stomach, threatening to come bursting through my throat.
The remainder of that short week was like a fever. I recall the stark shrinking of our classrooms’ numbers, as more and more students were kept at home, suspected of carrying the dreaded sickness. On the final day the quivering pretence of order was erased in totality. Bands of students ran along the corridors, playing games and pranks. Haggard teachers fruitlessly pursued, desperate to wedge them back under the thumb of authority one final time, but none would have it. I remember sitting in our common room, chatting inanely with friends who I hoped to keep and acquaintances I knew I’d lose. Before long I could no longer tolerate the “end-of days” atmosphere, and once more meandered the corridors. I took great care to bask in the sandstone walls, the suspended ceiling, the twisted staircases with their flaking coats of white paint. One week ago, it had all been so terribly mundane. Now I wanted to recall every inch of the place. The building which I had so often resented had become the vessel for my throbbing nostalgia.
Eventually, the teachers had made some ground in their efforts to restamp authority and we were shepherded into the assembly hall. The school technician had hastily slapped up a slideshow which showed each student’s class photo from their first to final year. Boys had become men. Girls had become women. For many the change was stark, others merely looked like an enlarged version of their younger selves. As my picture flashed upon the screen, I realised I thoroughly belonged to the latter camp. Rotund and chubby cheeked, the same unconfident short-back-and-sides adorning my head. My classmates gave me a generous cheer as I appeared. It was the sort of gesture, just one week prior, which would have caused my heart to swell with belonging. But now it meant nothing. An utterly pointless reaffirming of my place in a hierarchy which, in a few short minutes, would cease to exist forever.
The slideshow had ended. It was now time. The warm female teacher stood before us, wishing us well as we headed for the exit door one final time. She hastily explained amidst her farewells that a hug was customary, but now an “elbow bump” would have to suffice. I was quick to swerve past her at the exit, declining her offer. Outside the door, my three friends stood waiting. We all lived within a street of each other and, from the age of four, had made the walk from school to home together. We walked with slow, deliberate footsteps as we made that sorrowful pilgrimage for the final time. We reminisced on the past at our backs and prospected at the uncertain future we now begrudgingly walked towards. I thought of our first day of secondary school together and realised that I recalled nothing of the day itself, merely the events of the walk home. How the ill-fitting brogues had bitten at my ankles, how uncomfortable the foreign-feeling tie had been on my collar, how we had found an ant mound in someone’s driveway and immediately set about kicking it down, before having our reckless designs scuppered by an elderly neighbour.
I did not want it to end, the death throes of my schooldays, the final twilight of my boyhood. We had reached the junction where my friends must go one way, and I another. As we said our goodbyes, I looked at my companions. The boys who, before my very eyes, had grown to men. My friends. My dearest brothers. The ironclad bonds of childhood which held us in common cleaved my heart in two. The final stretch of the journey I made alone.
When I reached home, I slumped into the armchair and gazed mindlessly at the ceiling. In just a few days a national lockdown would be announced. For the next two years, the people of Scotland would be made subject to a writhing serpent of ever-changing rules, regulations, and restrictions. The world would be plunged into a state of death and disarray thought inconceivable just a few months prior. But, at that moment, numbly staring up at my living room ceiling, I prospected on none of that. I thought only of the thud as the school-books slammed shut. Like a rabbit chased out of a hole, I sat in stunned silence. The world had suddenly become much larger and I, shrinking, realised how small I was in its labyrinth.