By Kate Taylor, ’11, Contributor

I didn’t know the word “lifer” existed until I came to CCDS. The idea that it was possible to go to one school, just one, from the age of eighteen months to eighteen years, was inconceivable to me. Of course, I knew that if you lived in the same town your whole life you would always attend your district’s public schools, though moving around from elementary school to middle school to high school as required. But one school? One campus? For your whole life? Wow.

The first school I went to was your typical English public school (though in England public schools are called private and private schools are called public—don’t ask). I probably looked like your typical English school girl too – green and white checkered uniform dress, white ankle socks with green ruffles, black patent Clarks shoes, and two long brown pigtails, tied with my matching – you guessed it – green and white scrunchies. At Hampton Infants School, my favorite time of year was Christmas, when we put on the nativity play. The first year I was a reindeer. The second year I wanted to be an angel. But I ended up as a musician playing the triangle. In the pictures I have a very sad look on my face.

The next year any possibility of my becoming a “lifer” ever was extinguished when my parents decided not to send me to Hampton Junior School with the rest of my classmates. Instead I was sent to St. John’s the Baptist School, which I was actually happy about because the school colors were still green and white and they had houses! Though not yet enlightened to the world of Harry Potter, I still thoroughly enjoyed the idea of a house. I was placed in Fry House and each week the points would be added up and the House Cup would be awarded. If you won a point, you stuck a sticker up on the board under your name. I remember getting into a fight with a girl who claimed that one of my points on the board was actually hers. It was mine.

After six months, Dad came home from work one day and said, “I have a wonderful surprise – we are moving to Germany!” I ran up to my room in tears. No, Dad, this is not a wonderful surprise. Anyway, we moved to Germany and entered a world where people hung their pillows and duvets out the windows every morning to air them, and mowing the lawn and putting out the washing was illegal on Sundays.

During my three years at the International School of Wiesbaden, I nervously attempted to form German sentences under the eagle-eyed—though it often seemed evil-eyed—Frau Wackenroder; dressed up as Pippi Longstocking, red wig and all, for the Fasching carnival; and met and befriended kids from Germany, Australia, Brazil, Portugal, and Sweden. This was also my first introduction to anyone American. The American kids I met were obsessed with “The Base,” the American military base in Frankfurt, where they could stock up on Hershey’s chocolate and Fruit Roll-Ups, and they tried to convince us that Taco Bell was the best restaurant in the world. Inevitably, at lunch or some other large gathering, the Americans would end up facing off against the English in a sort of accent imitation contest. The Americans would put on high, posh voices and ask for tea and crumpets. We English would suddenly adopt loud, over-exaggerated drawls.  My favorite American imitation sentence? “Moooom, can I have a dawwwg, puhrlease I’ll feed it warterrr everyyy dayyy.”

Then I actually moved to America, and to Country Day. Suddenly, “biscuits” were “cookies”, “pants” became “underwear”, “trousers” became “pants”, and a big square vehicle was no longer a “lorry,” but a “truck.” On the first day of school, when the teacher asked me if I had any pets, my nerves got the better of me and I elapsed into a lengthy explanation of how I had two fish in England, and to get them to Germany we thought about putting them at the bottom of a dustbin with a bit of water and food, but obviously they wouldn’t last six weeks like that crossing the Atlantic, so we had given them to some friends, so no, I did not have any pets. When I had finally finished my riveting story I looked up and found blank faces looking at me. They had lost me when I had referred to a trashcan as a “dustbin.”  Then I realized that this was going to be harder than I’d thought.

I have been at CCDS for four years now. And it’s time to accept that even if I repeat both senior and junior year ten times over, I will not be a lifer. So what? I’m not a lifer (probably as opposite as it is possible to get, actually). And I never will be.  Honestly, I am a Non-Lifer and proud of it.

Photo courtesy of Kate Taylor.