| abstract
| - Archie: [Narrating] Mom and Dad dropped me off at school at 6:57 PM last night for the home coming lock-in party, and the minute I walked through the door, I knew I made a big mistake. It was like 99% young boys and 12% young girls. And even worse, REGGIE was there. I turned back to leave, but Professor Flutesnoot had already locked the door. So I was stuck there for the entire night with everybody else. I’m guessing that most of the young girls in Miss Grundy’s class decided not to go to the home coming lock-in party and the 1s who DID show up just didn’t get the word in the nick of time. I decided I was gonna need to make the best of it, and I walked right into the auditorium, where everybody else was taking their belongings. The 1st thing I noticed that there was at least 1 single grownup for every single teenage boy and teenage girl, which wasn’t really a good situation for wild times. Most of the chaperones were parents, but a few of them were teachers and other faculty members. But something told me the teachers and Mr. Weatherbee were only there because they never had 1 single choice. I put my belongings right down on the auditorium stage, where all of the other teenage boys and teenage girls were sitting. Then I noticed that Reggie was there, so I moved my belongings to the other side of the auditorium stage. I thought most of the teenage boys and teenage girls had already written off the entire night, because just about everybody else was playing with whatever electronic gadget they brought with them. Archie: “Oh man, I didn’t even THINK about bringing my Nintendo 3DS games, and I don’t have a comic magazine or anything else to entertain myself with!” I asked Miss Grundy what I could do around here. Archie: “Hey, Miss Grundy? is there anything else I can do around here?” Miss Grundy: “Well, Archie, there’s an activity center right in the corner for anybody else who needs a fun relaxing break during the entire night.” I went over to the activity center, but all of the activities were just younger kid stuff. I decided to just sit right down on his sleeping bag with my hands folded on his lap instead. At 7:00 PM, the grownups said it was time for fun party games, but nobody else heard them because everybody else had headphones on their heads. Coach Clayton said other people needed to be more social, so he confiscated all of the cell phones, music players and whatever else teenage boys and teenage girls had and put them in a duffle bag. Then we all sat right down in a great big circle right in the middle of the auditorium stage. Miss Grundy said we were gonna play some ice breakers that would help all of us get to know 1 another better. Miss Grundy: “Tonight, we’re gonna play some ice breakers that will help all of us get to know 1 another better.” But the truth is, all of us teenage boys and teenage girls know 1 another really well, because we’ve been together forever since our Riverdale Elementary School years. In fact, I thought we knew 1 another a little TOO often. Miss Grundy said we were gonna begin with something called the name game, where everybody else goes around and gives themselves a nickname that begins with the exact same letter as their 1st name, like Sporty Scott or Fast Farley or something like that. Miss Grundy: “We’re gonna begin with something called the name game, where everybody else goes around and gives themselves a nickname that begins with the exact same letter as their 1st name. The idea was that your nickname would say something about your true personality. Reggie went 1st…….. Reggie: “Rowdy Reggie.” It was very confusing for me to try to come up with an awesome sounding nickname, and my turn was coming up fast. I finally settled on Adventurous Archie, which I know is a bit lame, but it was very hard to think about a decent nickname that begins with the letter A.” I guess the other teenage boy to my right, Albert Lawson, was having the exact same problem as me. Albert: “Adventurous Albert.” Archie: “I can’t use the exact same word as Albert, or else other people would think I’m copying him.” And so I sat there for a little while trying to think about another good A word, but everybody else was staring at me and my mind just went blank. Then Miss Haggly chimed in and she gave me a wonderful idea. Miss Haggly: “How ‘bout ‘average’?” Archie: “That’s it!” Archie: “Average Archie.” Everybody else seemed real proud with that, even though I’m an average person, and it makes you wonder about our education system, especially since Miss Haggly is the 12th grade honors history teacher. I knew Average Archie was a real GOOD nickname, and I never gave it up. So right now I was sticking with a good nickname for the rest of the entire night, and probably ‘til I go off to Riverdale Community College. Right after that, we played a real fun game called ‘I Never Told Anybody This Before’, where we had to tell everybody else 1 secret. Miss Jefferson said the game would help all of us bond with 1 another, but I think the REAL purpose was to let the chaperones know who the trouble makers were. Alan: “I was the 1 who spray painted graffiti art on the front of the entire school!” My theory was proven right later on when Alan Johnson went right down the hallway to the men’s restroom and Coach Kleats followed him. Professor Flutesnoot: “Subject approaching, the corridor 3: men’s restroom.” We played a few more ice breakers, but nobody else could concentrate, because every single 5 2nds 1 of the cell phones in the electronics bag would begin buzzing or ringing. Then Coach Clayton would fish through the bag and try to find the cell phone that was ringing so he could turn it off. Unfortunately, he just gave up and locked the bag in the teachers’ lounge. Right after the games were over, we had a 26 minute rest break right before our next activity. A few of us had brought snack foods, but there was a strict no snack food policy, and we had to eat them under cover. Miss Grundy and the others seemed to know EXACTLY who had the snack foods, and they confiscated about 97% of them. Professor Flutesnoot even found my red cherry sugar balls, which were hidden in my pillow case. We finally realized that a familiar big creature was ratting us out. It was Moose, and he was being paid off with the snack foods the grownups collected. The only teenage boy who still had snack foods was Harvey Johansson, who had a big bag of twisted cheese puffs. I think Harvey knew it was just a matter of time right before he was caught, so he locked himself in the men’s restroom and tried to enjoy his snack foods. But the grownups figured out what was going on around here, and Harvey panicked and got rid of the evidence. Professor Flutesnoot: “We know you’re in there, Harvey!” Right after our break, we got back into the circle, and Miss Grundy told us we were gonna play a game called guess who? Then she split all of us up into 10 different teams. I was on team 5 with Albert, Jughead, Dilton and Moose. Archie: “I’m just lucky I don’t need to be on the exact same team as Reggie, because that would be very uncomfortable.” So here’s how the game worked: Every single team had to go into another room and take a photograph of 1 of its members. But the photograph had to be a close-up, like of a left or right ear or a nose or left or right arm or something like that. Then every single team would bring their photograph to the library room, and the other teams would need to guess who was in the photograph. Miss Grundy: “The winning team will get ice cream sandwiches from the freezer in the school cafeteria kitchen.” I gotta admit, it sounded like a fun exciting game. But when she handed out the cameras, there was practically a riot, ever since it had been almost 6 hours since any of us had access to any kind of technology. Then we found out they were those old-fashioned instant cameras that develop your photographs right away, and everybody else was a bit disappointed, because those kinds don’t have a screen or anything else on them. Our team went down to the home economics room where we could take our photograph in private. The 1st thing we had to do was figure out who was gonna be in the photograph. Albert said we should take a photograph of his bellybutton. But everybody else thought that would be too obvious because Albert has a serious outie, and all of the other teams would know EXACTLY who it was. Moose: “I’m not quite sure about this 1.” We tried taking photographs of different teenage boys and teenage girls in our group, but most of them were way too obvious. Dilton wanted the photograph to be of him, but his arms are totally covered in goose bumps, and we couldn’t find 1 single part of him that wouldn’t be 1 dead giveaway. We took a photograph of Moose’s back, but we caught 1 of the team 6 members spying on us and we had to pick somebody else. Albert: “Hey, no peeking!” We took a bunch of photographs of Jughead, but the best 1 was of his right elbow. Jughead: “Yeah, alright, you go, dudes!” You couldn’t even tell what the photograph was of, so that’s the 1 we went with. When all of the teams got back together forever in the library room, we put our photograph up on the wall with everybody else’s. And just as soon as we saw the other photographs, we knew we were gonna win the game. Some of the photographs were so easy to identify that it was actually kind of crazy. In fact, don’t ask me what the other people on Reggie’s team were thinking. We were willing to get on with the guessing part of the game, since we knew nobody else would be able to figure out who was in our photograph. But Coach Clayton just stood there looking at our photograph. Coach Clayton: “I wonder who’s in this photograph.” Then Coach Clayton said that he didn’t appreciate team 5’s juvenile stunt, and that we were disqualified from the competition. We all looked at 1 another trying to figure out what the heck Coach Clayton was speaking about. But Miss Grundy was fed up about it too. Miss Grundy: “It’s completely inappropriate to take a photograph of somebody else’s posterior. Nobody else on my team knew what posterior meant, but luckily we were in the library room, so we looked it up in the dictionary. And you’ll never believe this, but it means behind. In fact, we found out that there are about a million OTHER words for behind too. Archie, Jughead, Dilton, Albert and Moose: [Laughing Wildly] But the other teachers were fed up about it. They actually thought we took a photograph of somebody else’s behind, and I guess if you held the photograph at 1 certain angle, you could see how a young person could make 1 single mistake like that. Coach Clayton said he was gonna call our parents and tell them to come take 1 of us home, and he said that the teenage boy whose behind was in the photograph was gonna be in REAL big trouble. I knew that if Coach Clayton called my parents at 11:09 at night time, they were not gonna be proud about it, and I could tell a lot of the other teenage boys on my team were thinking the exact same thing. Then Albert made a run for it, which kind of put everybody else into a state of panic. So the rest of us ran for it too. Coach Clayton: “Hey, come back here!” It was every single man for himself, and I ended up hiding in the drama room with Jughead. We turned the lights off so that nobody else would come looking for us in there. Jughead was really terrified that the teachers were gonna do a behind line up to try and match the photograph to the right teenage boy. But I told Jughead he didn’t have anything to be terrified about, because he pulls his pants all the way down when he uses the urinal, so everybody else already knows what his behind looks like. Me and Jughead were in the drama room for a very long time, but we were finally caught by a couple of teachers who used Harvey to sneak us out. The chaperones brought all of us down to the library room where all of the other team 5 members were already rounded up. Well, everybody else except for Moose, who for all I know is still hiding behind the soda pop machine on the 2nd floor. Jughead told Coach Clayton that the photograph was of his right elbow. Luckily, there’s a mole near Jughead’s right elbow that matched up with the 1 in the photograph, or I don’t think Coach Clayton would’ve believed in him. Right after Coach Clayton looked at the photograph and Jughead’s right elbow a few more times, he said he made an innocent misunderstanding and that any reasonable person would’ve done the exact same thing. It seemed like a pretty weird apology to me, but I was just lucky he wasn’t still thinking about calling our parents. Right after that, the fun party games were over, and the grownups said it was time for us to turn in for the entire night. I thought everybody else who went to the home coming lock-in party was planning on staying up all night long, but at this point, I was lucky to go right to sleep if it meant the entire night might go by faster. I went back to the auditorium to get right into my sleeping bag, which was parked right next to Betty and Veronica, who are actually not bad looking. But the grownups said the young girls needed to take their stuff and move down the hallway to the library room and the young boys had to stay in the auditorium. I was hoping I could get some sleep, but a lot of the young boys started horsing around, and it was impossible for me to fall asleep. At 1 point Albert started chasing other people around with his outie, which was very disturbing. Other Teenage Boys: [SCREEEAM!] See, this is the kind of thing I can’t stand about teenage boys my age. When it comes down to it, they’re just a bunch of wild animals at the zoo. When Albert started chasing other people around, I excused myself to go to the men’s restroom so I could brush my teeth. The men’s restroom is in the back of the auditorium, and the lights were off, so it was real dark back there. I heard this weird sound, and I got a bit freaked out for 1 2nd, because our school has a problem with rats and other rodents. But it turned out to just be Veronica’s cousin, Leroy playing by himself in the ball pit. Leroy: “Tee hee……” Around midnight, Mr. Weatherbee told everybody else to get into their sleeping bags and settle down. Then he said there was no speaking, whistling or giggling for the rest of the entire night and he didn’t wanna hear 1 peep outta anybody else. Every single once in a while, somebody else would cut the cheese, and that made Mr. Weatherbee real fed up because he couldn’t figure out who was doing it. Right after what happened earlier with the photographs, I think the grownups were just really sensitive about anything else having to do with behinds. Moose: [Farts A Bit] Jughead: “Tee, hee, hee!” Mr. Weatherbee: “I heard that, young man.” Mr. Weatherbee said that if anybody else needed to pass gas, they had to go behind the auditorium stage curtain to do it. So then a lot of the teenage boys began taking turns telling Mr. Weatherbee they needed to go behind the curtain, and they would make the most obnoxious sound you can ever imagine. That went on for quite a while, and it kind of reached its peak when Moose went down to the music room and brought back a tuba. I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not, but right about that time the heat went off in the auditorium. In fact, I think that somebody else turned the air conditioner on. All I know is that everybody else stayed right in their sleeping bags right after that. Right after a little while Mr. Weatherbee fell asleep, but all of the young boys were still awake. Some of them were saying this was exactly like a prison house, and other people were speaking about busting outta there and going back home. The exact problem was that all of the exits were padlocked. I guess we should’ve known what we were getting into when they called this thing a lock-in party. Chuck said he’d seen a movie where some guy busted outta prison with a wooden spoon, and a lot of other people got pretty excited about that idea. But it turns out that was just a bunch of Hollywood crud, because we got some wooden spoons from the school cafeteria kitchen and we couldn’t even make 1 single DENT in the linoleum floor. At about 1:39 AM, somebody else noticed flashing lights coming from outside, so we all went to the back of the auditorium to see what was going on around here. There was a young man from the tow truck company, and he was walking around Mr. Weatherbee’s car, which was parked right in a handicapped parking lot. We tried getting the towing man’s attention so he could break us outta the school. But the young man never heard us, and he towed Mr. Weatherbee’s car. I thought about waking Mr. Weatherbee up to tell him, but I figured we should just let him get his beauty sleep. By this time it was so cold in the auditorium that us young boys packed ourselves together forever like sardines to preserve body heat. I figured it was probably nice and toasty in the library media room, and I was seriously thinking about going back there and joining the young girls. But I figured I’d get caught and I’d just be back to where I began. I think I probably fell asleep around 2:36 PM. Then at 3:01 PM there was a pounding on the back door that woke everybody else up. Mr. Weatherbee unlocked the door, and there was a bunch of fed up parents standing outside. Apparently, they’d been trying to call their sons and daughters to make sure everything else was alright, but the teenage boys and teenage girls weren’t answering, because Coach Clayton took everybody else’s cell phones. So then the parents called 1 another and everybody else got into a state of panic. To make a very long story short, the parents who came to the school took their sons and daughters home with them. And that left the only 2 teenage boys who didn’t have their cell phones: me and Jughead. So that was pretty crazy. Something else tells me that this entire lock-in party idea was just a scheme set up by the parents and teachers to turn us teenage boys and teenage girls off to young boy to young girl parties. And if that’s really true, then mission completed. End of narration sequence……..
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