❐   CORAL REEF DRAMA c.o. 2009

In 2005, two dozen students and I were accepted into Coral Reef Senior High School’s drama magnet program in Miami, Florida. Nobody cared.

Over the next four years, we took drama classes, sat around a lot, and occasionally put on theater performances. Nobody cared.

In 2009, we graduated from school and went off to college to start our lives, never to experience Coral Reef Drama again. Nobody cared.

Nobody, that is… except me. (And Josh, I guess.)

This is Coral Reef Drama c.o. 2009, a collection of essays about the lessons, stories, and memories from those four years of high school theater. It’s my goal to write hundreds of entries about everything we did, said, and experienced in the program – even if the audience is just me.

You may wonder why. With so much to document and discuss in the world, why cover a topic so niche and unimportant that even my fellow classmates, whose lives were directly affected by the contents of these essays, won’t bother reading them?

It’s simple: I don’t want these memories to die. As trivial and unimportant as they may seem to the rest of the world, I don’t want them to be forgotten. Plus, the program SUCKED, and I need documentation so that the public knows it, forever.

Nobody in the world cares about Coral Reef Senior High School’s drama magnet program, even on its best days. Most alumni can’t recall these stories for their lives. And that’s exactly why I’m doing this.

Though most of us have moved on, these classes were still the cornerstones of our teenage lives. Are they not worthy of introspection? Just because they’re in the past, did they not provide the foundation of everything we are today?

You see, reminiscing about Coral Reef Drama is like watching a favorite movie for the millionth time… and still finding new things to love about it. I think about these lessons and I laugh, even today. Every time I mull over something that stuck with me from back then, I’m delighted to recall several new details I hadn’t noticed before.

You also may wonder if the memories can really be so great when 99% of these essays are trashing the program. Yes. What’s your point?

Nobody remembers our class, it’s true. The group has left virtually no footprint on the world, no presence on any theater stage. So maybe let this collection be but one tiny, insignificant tribute to this quietly special family. We have nothing else.

As always, everything contained herein is “fictional.”