Repent, you Buffington Blue Devils. A Tribute to My Beloved Elementary School

An excerpt from a chapter dedicated to my beloved elementary school. I hope you like it. 

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Probably my favorite parts of Buffington were the gym and the playgrounds. We didn’t have lacrosse teams, intramural cooperation exercises and yoga classes. We played dodge ball with those red rubber balls that’d blister your butt cheeks like the playground slide in September. We played contact sports. We had to climb a rope that hung from the roof without safety harnesses. If you fell, you’d better hope Mr. Red (not his real name) hadn’t polished the floor lately, for if he did, you weren’t gonna stop till you hit the sinner’s altar across the street at Philadelphia Baptist Church.

But what will make some of you outsiders hug your trees a little tighter is our school mascot:  the Blue Devils. When I say Blue Devils, I don’t mean some cornflower-hued baby sporting little horns and carrying a shiny gold scepter. Our school mascot was a blue demon straight from the pit of hell. This mascot is why everybody went to church back then. The best part of sunny days at Buffington was getting to play outside, and not being watched by the blue Beelzebub behind the visitor’s basket.

Right before I left Buffington, the PC virus snuck in. I’m talking about politically correct, not computers. The only computers we had essentially converted the old stage into a sauna computer lab, and housed five idolized floppy disks of Oregon Trail. (Dad gum it, Lucille, how many times can one person die from typhoid?!) But sadly, we were told to change our beloved demon mascot, and our emasculated house of learning became home to the Buffington Bombers, the ferocious little teddy bears wearing bomber jackets and goggles. The devil mascot may have put a bunch of us in therapy, but I hope to God they never won another game after they took his ugly mug off of that gym wall. Bless his heart.