My time at Galileo was defined by friends. I didn’t have a lot of classes with my main group of friends, and lunch time was when I would see everybody, so it would always be my favorite part of the day.
Freshman year lunch was all about football. Not the kind you see on TV — I mean the most chaotic game of football ever played. Every day we’d sprint out to the field with a beat-up football, a few backpacks to mark the end zones, and absolutely no plan whatsoever.
We weren’t good. Like, at all. Half of us couldn’t throw straight, no one knew if we were playing two-hand touch or tackle until someone got mad, and we spent more time arguing than actually playing. But man, it was fun. People were falling all over the place, tripping in the grass, making one-handed catches they’d never replicate again. Someone always lost a shoe. At least three people went back to class sweaty and limping, but we lived for it. The field became our thing.
By sophomore year, we got tired of rolling ankles and switched it up to basketball — right outside the weight room. That little outdoor court was run down and probably unsafe to play on.. One rim leaned left, the other had a bent net, but it didn’t matter. We were still trash, but just in a new sport. It wasn’t about being good — it was about who could talk the most trash without getting subbed out. If you made one shot, you were hot. If you airballed, everyone clowned you for a week. And if you fouled someone? That just meant you cared.
There were no real teams — just chaos. Games to 5 or 7, winner stays on, loser sits. Someone always brought a speaker and blasted music too loud. Someone always argued over the score. Someone always took a half-court shot they had no business attempting.
By junior year, the basketball crew was tight. Same group almost every day. We knew who was always late, who never passed, and who celebrated every layup like they won Game 7. We still weren’t good, but we played with passion — the kind of passion only lunch hoopers can understand.
Sometimes people would just pull up and watch — probably laughing at us, but whatever. We had our little routine: warm up with some bricks, argue over who’s guarding who, get sweaty, and then rush to class like we didn’t just run a full-court game in Vans
.Then senior year hit, and it was like the whole vibe shifted. Nobody really played anymore. The court was still there, but we stopped showing up. It wasn’t like we said, “hey let’s stop.” It just kinda… faded. And instead, we started going to” First Cup” at lunch. My friends started to go and one by one we all started hopping along. Then after we go to “First Cup”, we just walked around in the halls.
Those hallway walks were underrated. We talked about everything and nothing. College plans, old memories, people we used to be cool with, dumb things that happened in 9th grade. Sometimes we didn’t even talk. We just walked.It wasn’t hype like football or loud like basketball. It was calm. Comfortable. Like we were soaking up those last bits of high school before it was over. Some days I wished we’d go back out and hoop. Other days I was good just walking around.
Funny how something as basic as lunch became such a big part of high school. We didn’t have the craziest stories or highlight plays. We were just a bunch of kids trying to have fun and make memories before the bell rang.
