I was not at the Abington Senior High School walkout in February, as I am a coward.

I woke up worried that something horrible would happen, that someone would do something stupid as people are known to do. The cafeteria that morning was probably as loud as it usually is, perhaps only I felt the nervous buzz, perhaps only I heard the quick hushed conversations like those of a theater before the curtain rises. There was a distinctive sense of everyone not talking about what everyone was talking about. Or maybe that’s just how things usually are.

Once the show began, the gossip and murmurs stopped. My cinema class was deathly silent. Strangely silent. Why was my cinema class silent? Minutes passed and my teacher was still not there, it was weird. Thinking it may be related somehow, I tried to check when exactly the walkout was supposed to begin. It started later than I thought, but either way my teacher was not in the class. Attendance hadn’t been taken but when the time came, some kids left the room.The question arose: could I take the call? Should I take the call? 

I mean that literally, the phone was ringing. Attendance was confused why they hadn’t received attendance. Non-ironically a kid picked it up and told them a teacher was in the room. The kids realized that with no teacher, with no one to check on them, they could do whatever they wanted. And what they wanted to do… was sit there on their cell phones. So there I sat like everyone else. I grabbed my coat, I sat my coat down. I grabbed my gloves, I sat down. I didn’t want anyone to watch me leave and see or say whatever they would say or see.

The minutes crept by as I read the opening of Night for a quiz the next period. A story from a man who had lived through the holocaust. A story that starts with a population ignoring a warning. A story that starts with a group of people dismissing and justifying a control system dipping further and further into injustice. A story that starts with the future victims of the holocaust denying it could ever happen. Suffice to say, it instilled in me a new thirst. I went to get water. But then I went further, and a little further and then I was out the hall. I mean no-one was watching, and when no one is watching or checking in on something…

I’ve never skipped a class before, the hall monitors aren’t familiar with me. But if I’m willing to miss an entire day to sing some songs, how much could missing one hour hurt?

I situated myself in what must’ve become the school’s most popular staircase that day. People were noticing or at least rubbernecking as they passed by, and for perhaps the first time in my educational career I was properly taking notes. A trio of girls who came by called the walkout “Cute” a remark I still can’t understand. A lot of kids just passed through quickly, snapping a photo, having a laugh, expressing shock for a second before moving on with their day.

A quartet of guys came through saying, “All those happy kids, they just wanted to skip, they don’t really care,” I removed the curses but the rest is a quote. It’s a quote with a sentiment shared by many I overheard and I might as well address. Now, undoubtedly at least one kid out there just saw the opportunity to skip and took it; however, I for one have never had a class so unbearable that I started a faux protest only to get out for a single hour on a single day. There are in fact safer, less complicated and infinitely easier ways to get an unexcused absence on any given Wednesday. I know this, as in Exhibit A we have a quartet of boys aimlessly wandering the hallways and commenting on current events. The “They just wanted to get out of class” argument is in my mind, ridiculous and absurd. If that was the main point, the Wednesday Walkout will go down in history as the loudest most involved, high-profile, predicated and participated in Attendance Avoidance Attempt to ever happen here. And that’s insane as all you really need to do apparently is tell the office your classroom already has a substitute teacher and cut out the rest of the process.

When it comes to turnout my prediction was around 150, the rumors that day went up to around 260, and later reporting confirmed a number of 200+ scholars in the snow that day. From where I stood, with it partially obscured it was an impressive group, if not overwhelming. Two members of staff were talking about the numbers with one saying that while it looked like a lot, compared to the total number of students it wasn’t much. And while 8% doesn’t look very large on paper, it certainly got people’s attention.

The situation was being handled by the staff remarkably well. Asking people to move along past the windows everyone kept lingering by. I did many conspicuous laps that day. Ultimately even with the unexpected bathroom pipe bursting and the horrible smells relating, things were kept orderly. (At the time there were a lot of rumors and speculations on the horrible smell in the air, pinning it on some weird smoke bomb, sabotage, or something, but sometimes it really is as simple as a pressure that has built up for too long.)

Now, to clear the air none of this has happened because the school systems are brainwashing children, a claim you frequently hear when just about anything is happening. If that were true, they’re doing a poor job as no more than 10% of any classroom I passed was missing. It was an independently organized event. Additionally, people in the Philly suburbs or Minneapolis streets are not “America-hating” for participating in a protest. Americans have been protesting, holding sit-ins and walk-outs, even riots or rebellions since before anyone reading this sentence was born, it’s practically a defining element of our culture.

There was a beautiful shot I wish I could have gotten as the kids began to return. The largest flag held high at the front of the group trailing and waving over them in the morn’s early light.

I’ll admit I started to tear up at the sight of it. The sight of students from my cinema class or your gym class, kids from the theater department or the soccer team or bird club, at the sight of the grandchildren of Korea and Japan, Europe and Africa, Brazil and Mexico standing united under the stars and stripes. I felt a great wash of pride come over me for something as stupid and astounding as simply standing up for what we can be, to care for others. To have compassion for others. To shout for empathy and justice. In my mind, this is America, it isn’t the mountains or the valleys, the wars or court cases, the factories or inventions, it’s the one thing we’ve had from the very beginning: people. People with ideals, hopes, ambitions.

I can’t say what was said, as I was not there. What may have been immature or inflammatory, moving or mature. From where I stood halfway up the stairs I couldn’t hear a word of it. But I heard their voices, calling for something, begging for something.

To the kids who went, walking out of your algebra classes and chemistry labs was not a solution to the problems you see in the world, no amount of standing by a flagpole can do that. But to have the bravery to do so is an important first step on whatever path you travel.

And to the people tightly closing the blinds consider: what is it out there that you are so afraid of? The children with cardboard signs? The mothers in minivans? The armed customs agent in the streets? I imagine it’s the change that all these things represent. Change is an unavoidable part of life, a part of growth and I think it’s important we steer this change wisely.

Let me be the first, certainly not the last to tell you that America can be great but not by violently ripping itself apart, and blaming its issues on the different and alien. I think that just about any American would agree that something is going very wrong here. You do not get protesters unless there is something they feel the need to protest, and you do not get shot bodies lying dead on the ground unless someone decides to pull the trigger.

We get bombarded with so much information every day and it’s easy to become stuck just staring out the window watching it all pass by. I believe it’s important to be watching, to be vigilant, to be aware. An uninformed public is a manipulatable one. A person not being watched or checked, can do whatever they want. And so there I stood, not in class and not out, neither at the top of the stairs or the bottom in a strange moment of inbetween.

It’s been two months now since the walk-out, and we have collectively returned to the average mundanity of any other school year. Spring has sprung, the grass has grown in. A new war has begun, and Dr. Swift has returned to the building. People have died, people are dying. Life and death have both moved on. However, the questions and struggles from then still linger in the air. Where should we go from here? 

I’m afraid I don’t have the answer, and I am a coward.