Amanda Lion ’17 & Casey Gibbons ’17
*while reading, please listen to the Monstertruck Mania Theme song Playlist*
Mountain Lakes High School is not a big place. As a result, any MLHS student who has been at the school for more than a week can navigate our 8 hallways eyes closed. However, just because our school is easy to navigate, doesn’t mean it’s fun. We have all felt the hallway struggles, from being crushed by the crowd to being bumped into by oblivious rushing student. These incidents are to be expected, but honestly, they don’t have to be common. Hallway traffic can be reduced, all we have to do is pay attention!
Passive hallway incidents are the most common of all hallway incidents. Incidents of this distinction mainly include the clumps of people crowded by their lockers, either unmoving, taking up two thirds of the tiny hallways, or moving at the pace of 0.2 miles per hour (which is the approximate speed Jonathan the Tortoise walks). All we ask here is to be aware.
We understand, sometimes you’re just really into a conversation you’re having with some friends, and you just aren’t really paying attention to your exact travel velocity. However, it would be greatly appreciated by those around you, if, rather than slowing down the hallway’s mean velocity by several miles per hour, you just try to keep at a similar pace to those around you.
Also, don’t whip around suddenly when you realize you’ve passed your locker, just step off to the side and 
then turn around. This way, you avoid whacking people upside the head with your massive backpack.
Speaking of massive backpacks, there are also the aggressive hallway incidents. Let’s be honest, none of us are happy when we get hit in the face with a Herschel backpack because someone just had to rush to class at 10x the speed of an average hallway walker.
Listen kids, when you’re walking through the hallway with a cup of hot soup from nutrition class, and a kid barrels into you without a care in a the world, spilling the Nectar of the Gods that you just spent a full period making, no one involved is going to walk away unscathed. If you’re running behind and really have to get to class, a little rushing is understandable, but don’t take any innocents down with you. We’re all just trying to get from point A to point B.
And hey, Casey and I aren’t saying we’re never at fault here. Everyone is a hallway menace at one point or another, no matter how hard this is to accept. But the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I can recount many a time stopping dead in the hallway and having several kids collide into me from behind. And honestly, sometimes it’s just easier to pretend you’re a freight train and run over every single person in your path. But with great power comes great responsibility, and we should not abuse our ability to bulldoze smaller students.
The only excusable times to run in the crowded hall is when you see one of those bugs with 10 million legs 
crawling towards you on the floor, or a cave cricket jumps towards you threateningly. And even then, it is still appreciated if you didn’t step on anyone besides these monstrosities (actually, let me rephrase, please step on these monstrosities).
A world where everyone can get to class with their hot soup safe, and their bodies unharmed by backpacks (and other hallway menaces) is a world that I want to live in. We’re starting with the small things here, baby steps. Next thing we tackle? People who don’t flush the school toilets.
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