Is this it? Is it all coming to an end? Is this all we’re going to experience? The halls of Park High School have become increasingly more like an empty abandoned hospital corridor. With an unreal amount of snow decimating the entire Park county area and numerous sicknesses making the rounds through Livingston, it’s easy to think that the rapture has finally started. The herd is being culled.

Somehow, I’ve managed to trek the long and treacherous route from my houses to the school, the long, cold and grueling six blocks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose half of my fingers from frostbite and I’ve lost all feeling in my nose, ears and cheeks. I can’t imagine what it would be like for students that live out of town. Is it fair for students that are stuck in their homes to miss out on in class material because they physically can’t come to school? Well…… THAT is a topic for another column.

If you have a pulse and attend Park High School, then you would know that the school made history during the middle of the world ending snowstorm. Park High called their first snow day since, what has been the rumor in the halls, 1989. We live in snow capital of the United States of America, maybe besides northern Montana, Minnesota and maybe Alaska but whatever. Since ‘89! That’s how bad this was. Now, it’s one thing to make us come and tough it out, but to make things worse, to add insult to injury, one of two boilers were out of commission at the school, and I’m pretty sure it still is. There is nothing I love more than surfing the waves of snow, only to come freeze myself learning about literary devices in A.P. English.

The herd was culled from phase one of the rapture. Those who were lost to the arctic tundra will not be forgotten. Their remains will be recovered in the spring when the snow melts. Just when we all thought we were safe, we thought the worst was over, phase two was initiated. It first came as a seasonal week long cough. Almost as if it was a flip of a switch, the cough mutated into three different options. Students started falling over left and right from the flu, pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Just as the halls of Park High School started to fill again, they once more started to become empty. I play Dungeons and Dragons every weekend with my friends, and we’re pretty good about playing every weekend, and we haven’t played in over TWO months because of one, we’ve all been too busy (see Buddy’s Column #1: Back to Back) and two, of the ten or so of us, we are all DYING of sickness. River Nichols: PNEUMONIA. Zach Roberts: Influenza and Pink Eye. Ethan Bristol: Influenza. Kaleb Irish: Influenza with a 103 degree fever. Nick Lockit: Influenza. Kenyon Jones: Respiratory Infection. It became such a long wait that we tossed around the idea that maybe we would all just go play and create an absolute cesspool of sickness and just bleh in one place. We didn’t.

Anyways, the thaw is on, the plague is maybe sorta just a little bit not really subsiding and spring break is a couple days away baby! Those of you who didn’t freeze to death or lungs didn’t fill with liquid, congratufreakinglations! Natural selection made you a chosen one! Carry on the torch and make all of us proud.