LUCCA. The years pass and the students change, but the most beautiful traditions remain, and the costumes of the last week of fifth grade are one of them. A tradition that is felt in most schools in Lucca, but especially in the Vallisneri scientific high school. Last Saturday began the long-awaited week of the year in which each of the fifth classes adopts a different theme and dresses up for the occasion, dividing the fields outside and each building the space to stage their own little show. In recent years the event has become something even more heartfelt, a real challenge, judged by the students of the other classes, who by voting for the best costume, will establish, at the end of the day, which class was the best.
There are those who stage concerts and rave parties, those who try to recreate the Brazilian and Spanish atmosphere complete with paella and sangria. There are those who reconstruct the scenario of a film, as with a Mamma Mia flashmob, those who wear pink clothes to recall Barbie or the black ones from The Matrix, or even those who pretend to be in the Rai studios of Affari Tuoi.
But to secure the public’s vote it is necessary to try to capture their attention and what is the better way than to set up a betting shop or a game of goose with penances such as cream, flour and tempera thrown at you? Confetti, water balloons and fake money are thrown; and to “conquer” there are also those who try to gain votes by giving away champagne.
The last week of school, at Vallisneri, revolves around this event. These are the days in which kids can, even just for a moment, take away from their heads the anxiety of having to face the fateful final exam, which is scary just thinking about. It is also the moment in which we can pretend that those are not really theirs, our last days of school, the last days surrounded by the same classmates and teachers alongside whom we spent five years.
Like all things, the last week of high school ends and we arrive at the last day: the most awaited, but at the same time the one we fear the most. It is the part in which we really realize that a very important phase of our life is over: the phase in which we could escape the questions by hiding under the desk, the one in which we could ask for help and advice from professors. The phase of class trips and nights spent getting to know classmates better has come to an end, along with the battles to decide who is in the back row and whose turn it is to go to the front.
Inevitably that day, whether you want it or not, tears fall, especially when you find yourself having all your teammates sign the white shirt, as if you already knew that some of them you will forget, but that looking back at that shirt, suddenly you will remember everything. There are those who say that high school are the best years of life, so happy and carefree, just like those last days of dressing up. In this week the only thought is to have fun with friends and dress up better than the others, then the thoughts become different: first there is the final exam to face, then the most important challenge, what is called “the real life.”
