A boarding school Pizza Story
I used to attend a boarding school that's one of the most amazing schools ever!
It was a small school located in the Berkshire mountains. The student body was comprised of merely 80 students ranging from 13 to 19 years of age.
They came from all over the country and even the world. As many as 120 of the students spoke English as a second language. Many of them were barely familiar with English and just beginning their journey of learning.
Another really cool component of the school is the number of different lifestyles you'd be introduced to through the intermingling of people from different walks of life.
Soon, this would result in making friends we'd never make and being exposed to many different elements. Community was a huge part of this school.
As a result, all meals were eaten communally. The teachers at this school were absolutely dedicated to an unbelievable degree and ate every meal with students in our dining hall. The dining hall was comprised of many wooden tables that had been handcrafted by the school's founding groundskeeper, a man of many talents.
Anyways, the food was excellent at this boarding school. The kitchen staff was incredible, dedicated, and wonderful. Our meals were made with wholesome, quality ingredients and created with a palpable sense of care, intentionality, and love. These meals were often incredible and sometimes just slightly better than neutral. This meal life was very good.
The girls lived above the dining hall, which was adjacent to the kitchen. Therefore, the trek to the kitchen to check on the menu for lunch or dinner was a short walk downstairs. The boys had to walk across a long stone path. This was often a pleasant walk but could be brutal in the winter. Brutal as in, your nose hairs are frozen by the time you arrive at the dining hall. Then you'd see a girl roll out of bed and downstairs to grab a bowl of cereal and a bagel in her cozy slippers and pajamas.
As a result, boys would often fall to the kitchen to find out the night's meal. And despite the excellence of the school's cuisine, any rotation or routine has the capacity to get boring. As a result, students sometimes skipped meals and ordered pizza or Chinese food in their dorms. As I mentioned before, in a small community-oriented school, the absence of a few members could have very deep effects on the energy and atmosphere.
This was particularly the case because students had rotating waiter duties where they'd be in charge of bringing out any additionally required foods, setting up, and clearing the table. If you skipped a meal during your week as an assigned waiter, this was a next-level offense as some non-waiter would have to scramble to take care of your duties.
Anyways, the skipping of meals to order delivery food had a negative impact on the spirit of community and the mealtime experience.
As a result, the faculty called the local restaurants and told them not to deliver to the school. Which led to a bit of a scenario.
"Hi, can I order a large cheese and jalapeño onion pizza to blank school?"
"Sorry kid, we're not allowed to deliver to your school anymore."
Wow. This was unbelievable. How could they do this! We would not be stopped. Adopting some mythologized techniques we'd heard about, we went to our school's impressive drama department. There we entered the costume barn and put on our most convincing "uniforms".
Then we would jump the fence to the golf course across the street. The very golf course that is mentioned is against one of the ten-ish rules we are handed as students of this school. We then called the pizza place again!
"Hi!
We are the golf course superintendents and we're just working a late shift right now. We'd like to order a pineapple jalapeño onions pizza please… delivered to the golf course."
"Uh. Ok, alright."
We received the delivery on the golf course. Eventually, the driver let us know that we weren't fooling him at all. Whatsoever, not once. So he gave us his cell phone number and said don't worry about all the dress-up golf course stuff. Call me directly when you want pizza. And just like that, we became the school's pizza suppliers.
This story sequence is one of the most important in my life! I have aspirations to make a show about this, and this has been a vision of mine for over a decade at this point. Here is a video of me performing this scenario with my amazing boarding school teacher.
He was an amazing guy who was taekwondo for a teacher, a video production teacher, a math teacher, a wizard of sorts. Strangely, this guy was initially ridiculed and roasted when I started school as a freshman. By the end of the four years, I'd found him to be laughably amazing and accomplished.
Anyway. Here is a clip of him helping me document me breaking two school rules.
When we shot this scene, he also actually bought me and my video assistant partner pizza for the scene! That we got to eat, to ourselves! Epic man,
I love this story. This school was legendary. Delivering to you the tales, humorous stories, and philosophies of this school is one of my most intense life missions. I believe it to be my purpose!
Not just because I'd love to make a comedy TV show but I think this school, community, and experience embodied something very rare, essential, and maybe even critical. I look forward to discussing this school in many capacities! Stay tuned. Thanks for your viewer and readership.