It’s that time of year again! Guess what? I could say “It’s that time of year again” any second I choose, and still be right, because time is more than a year old!
In other words, that was not a very good intro, and if I were you, I wouldn’t stand for that. Now is an appropriate time to vent your anger, before you continue reading and are angered again, as too much un-vented anger is the explanation for 4 out of 5 stories in the National Enquirer (“Child Kidnapped by Butterflies and Sold to China” is a good example).
What I meant to say is, school is starting/started. This means that, aside from every possible negative thing that will happen in association with the start of school (weight of negatives: 7,948,293,345), you will get your own locker (new weight of negatives: 7,948,293,342).
Granted, the interior is incredibly unpleasant, as detailed in Lockers are Not Your Friend, but it is still a positive of “3”. For those curious, I came up with those numbers by introducing my forehead to my keyboard.
So, while you already know everything about general locker existence, you may not know the proper way to “break in” a locker.
Literally, I Mean Be Literal
First, you should take this literally.
If a part of your locker isn’t already defunct, than something must be up, because lockers are manufactured broken. It is likely that people with unbroken lockers have been singled out for an unpleasant experiment, say, the testing of carcinogens found in a combination jello and asbestos (aka your school’s mystery meat).
Since this isn’t a good thing, you can avoid the testing by breaking a part of your locker; the hinge, lock, undented surface, or paint is a good place to start. You could also just unscrew the whole locker block and barricade the hallway, but this is a fire hazard, namely, people will have to set fire to the lockers to get by.
Personalize it
Now that your locker is “normal,” you should go about personalizing it. To start, you can take a page from the official “Dog’s Guide to Marking Territory (Updated: Even when you shouldn’t!).” No, I don’t mean you should use your locker as a toilet; all I recommend is that you disinfect your locker, because I’m sure that someone, maybe even an actual dog, has, at some point, relieved themselves in your locker.
Recommended disinfectants include Bleach, Lysol, Windex, Raid, or Expired Bleu Cheese.
Along with these common disinfectants, many stores also sell “locker furniture.” The first person to come up with this was shoved into their locker and then found a fully functioning winter landscape, carriage, lamp post, and various houses, complete with a talking lion (whose name I cannot reveal due to copyright purposes, but I can tell you it rhymed with Aslan). I believe that was the locker of some author or other.
Your choices include a wide range of products: a mirror, a metal stacking shelf, a mirror-message board, a plastic-stacking shelf, a glass stacking shelf, and a marble mirror-message board stacking shelf.
I highly recommend you pick up at least a stacking shelf, as it does come in handy. For instance, you can sit on it when you are waiting for the Janitor to let you out of your locker. You can use it to hold books (assuming the books weigh less than 3 ounces or that you reinforce it with toothpicks). You can even get apps for it! Well, I’m getting ahead of myself, but I’m sure the iStacking iShelf will come out soon.
The Final Personalization: Odor
The final step in the locker personalization is, of course, odor. You have only one year to try and create an odor that could become legendary.
On the second floor of my school last year, for instance, there was the one hall with such a legendary smell that they padded the floor with pillows so that when people passed out they wouldn’t get hurt too badly. And if you believe that, let me tell you that you should vote Richard “Honest” Nixon for president this coming election.
But back to odor. I can give you some tips, but the odors of true legend, the ones that inspire stories such as “Snow White” (who passed out after inhaling the apple) and “2001: A Space Odessey” (the creators figured that since the audience was probably only half-functioning from their high school locker odor exposure, they could draw out some music and reuse the same 10 seconds of footage to make their movie longer), are original creations.
To get you started, you can use excessive deodorant, globs of hand lotion, sun-dried gum, PE clothes rotted to the point where they are practically alive, and a live, caged skunk.
After completing these three steps, not only are you set to have a less unpleasant year (by “3,” remember) but you also have a locker that you can call your home sweet (and smelly and broken) home away from home. Plus, if you get enough stacking shelves, you can build an emergency escape ladder for when your locker rises up against you.
