Sky View High School Spirit Fountain Ritual

[At first] We would hold the drinking fountain for each other and get a drink and then at the end we would, like, make these chicken noises. And then that progressed in to Marty [another English teacher at the school] being, like, the leader cuz he would, like, mock us when we would bow because sometimes we’d to each other like, [mocking situation] “Oh, thank you!” and we’d do a little bow or a curtsy or something like that after someone held the drinking fountain. So then it became a ritual where after we played [basketball] we’d go to the drinking fountain, we would get in a circle around the drinking fountain, Marty would be the closest to the drinking fountain, Doyle [another teacher] would always start, I would always be the last person, and then we’d let anybody else who wanted to, we even had students who started coming. And we got it down to a science where you came up, you had your own unique bow, so you could do whatever you wanted, some people did just a traditional bow, some people, like I said, did a curtsy thing, some people did like some weird hop thing. I did this thing where I move my knees back and forth, some people do like the prayer thing where they put their hands together an’ squat. Just all kinds, whatever unique little bow you wanted. So you’d walk up, you’d bow to Marty, and he would do the exact same bow back to you, like he’d do it at the same time you were doing it, so he was just copy-catting you. Then you had to take five gulps from the drinking fountain. So, for some reason we believed that you need to stay hydrated, so we made everybody take five gulps, and if you could tell they only took one, then we’d say, “Nonono, you gotta take five.” I have no idea why. But we took five gulps. Then as you stepped away, you had to do the exact same bow again, and again Marty mimicked the bow that you did, and then you stepped back in to the end, so right next to Doyle, on the circle. So as you stepped in, wherever you were on the circle, when you stepped out you took the end of the line behind Doyle. And then I finished it off because once I did mine, then I would turn to the drinking fountain and Mary would step out and he would get to do his part, so he’d have his own bow, take his five gulps, bow at the end. Then we would all get in a circle and we would all do our unique bow to each other at the same time and then we all had to do a chicken dance, so everybody did their own chicken dance just screaming at the top of their lungs and then we went around the circle and gave high-fives to everybody. And pretty much whoever did it, they were blessed for that day. So they had a better day.