Sophomore Ollie Watkins was paddling the lake surrounding Mt. Arenal in Costa Rica with his family during spring break when something floating in the water caught his eye.
Just as his family was preparing to bring their kayaks in, Watkins spotted that unmistakable bright red lanyard and case bobbing in the water.
“I honestly couldn’t believe what I was looking at initially,” Watkins said. “I mean, I know those bathroom passes often get left in the bathroom or somehow end up in another teacher’s room, but I never thought I’d see one while adventuring in Costa Rica.”
He scooped the lanyard out of the water with his oar and saw psychology teacher Christine Mormon’s name written on the back of it in well-worn, faded Sharpie, confirming both that it was indeed a Homewood hall pass and that it had endured quite the journey to get there.
“I tried explaining the phenomenon of these things disappearing to my parents, but they just didn’t get it,” Watkins said. “I was happy to retrieve it, however, and bring it back to school.”
The first thing at school Monday morning, Watkins returned the hall pass to Mormon, who was reasonably shocked.
“I assumed that thing was either long gone or was hanging in another teacher’s collection of passes,” she said. “But, I never expected it to be so misplaced that it ended up in another country.”
Apparently the hall passes have a habit of not making it back to their teacher’s room. A recent email thread of high school teachers tried to piece together the mysterious whereabouts of various teachers’ passes.
The exchange began when Spanish teacher Julian Kersh sent a mass email inquiring whether any teachers had his yellow office pass.
Calculus teacher and HHS legend Mark Hellmers found Kersh’s pass floating around with his, which made him realize his very own yellow office pass had gone AWOL. The vicious cycle continued with teachers realizing they had someone else’s passes mixed in with theirs.
Chemistry teacher Jenny Firth said she inexplicably found a bathroom pass from Tarrant Intermediate School hanging amongst her other passes one day.
Ultimately, Mormon was appreciative of Watkins returning her pass.
“Not that it reflects negatively on me in any way, because students tend to just take those things and leave them where they please, but I was a little stressed about that one pass missing from the hooks by my classroom door,” she said. “That was a heads up play from [Watkins], and I won’t forget it any time soon.”
Mormon suggested a simple solution to the misplacement of many HHS hall passes.
“It seems like a student could just take the pass when they leave the classroom, keep up with it for the next three or four minutes, and then hang it up where they found it when they return,” she said.
Mormon referenced a psychology principle known as the Pygmalion effect, where your lofty expectations can positively influence the behaviors and performances of another, in hopes that students may get better at returning the passes. She added, however, that she will not be holding her breath.
