The Brotherhood of the 4° Lunch Club

This is a little story I like to tell people about one of my fondest high school memories...

The Brotherhood of the 4° Lunch Club began October 7th, 2015, by a handful of sophomores and juniors who shared a free fourth period, who were really tired of spending it in the library under the strict rules in place. Rules such as: no phones, no loud talking, no eating, no headphones, no large groups at one table, etc.

The Brotherhood was formed when those of us sitting at the same table kept getting caught breaking these rules—and we were getting caught a lot—and decided to turn it into a game. How many of these rules could we break without getting caught? And how much could we bend and push them before getting in trouble?

And thus, the Brotherhood was formed. We started at 5 members but grew to 13 by the end of the school year. The first rule on our list? Eating in the library. From the first day until our last, we kept count of how many snacks we were able to sneak in without getting caught. In our 41 attempts to break this rule, we managed to sneak 164 snacks into the library, including a Thanksgiving (with peppered turkey, pumpkin bread, strawberries, and rice krispie treats, complete with a grace and giving of thanks (happy two year anniversary of that, as a matter of fact)) and not including a giant end-of-the-year feast held in the MPR after the library closed for finals, with roughly 30 snacks on its own. In the log, we were only caught 3 times: "11/9/15: Nick got caught eating after Brendan tried opening a bag of Famous Amos; 1/23/15: Bryce was being dumb as fuck with some cashews; 3/28/16: Bryce licking stuff off his fingers." The rule was broken.

The next rule up was one we weren't sure existed. It turns out it was perfectly acceptable to hold arm wrestling tournaments in the library during free period. The rule was nonexistent.

After that, Cards Against Humanity Tournaments. We pushed and bent this one for a good few days before we were finally asked to stop. The rule was enforced.

Next up: the big one. We wondered: would chess constitute as a bannable activity in the library? I brought in a set, made a board out of some graph paper taped together, and the games began. After the first few matches, one of the librarians noticed how excited our table was getting. She came over to inspect, and lingered for a few moments when she saw what we were doing. Apparently there was nothing inherently wrong with what we did, so we continued and she left. The staff kept a pretty close eye on us from then on, though. Waiting for us to slip up, to prove we were doing something wrong. We tried pushing it slowly, using our phones as chess timers, but got shut down pretty quickly. We decided we were satisfied with our finding something fun that wasn't against the rules and kept with it for the rest of the year. The results: 84 matches in a single semester. The rules were bent.

Other things we did:
Blackjack tourney (acceptable)
Use of headphones (not caught)
Netflix Binge Party (not caught)
Browsing Reddit inconspicuously (not caught)
Napping (not caught)
Passing notes (not caught)
Playing steal the cake (acceptable)
Wearing hats inside (unacceptable)
Seating more than 6 people at a table (unacceptable)

Other things that happened in the library that the Brotherhood honors but wishes they did themselves:
Leaving crappy MS Paint pictures on the desktops of all the computers
Rubiks Cube time trials
Leaving a file labelled "Death" on all the computers which opens 1000 calculators all at once
Leaving another file on all the computers which opens 1000 files all at once
Setting the homepage of every computer to a gif of my face slowly scrolling across the screen
Placing a pen in one of the overhead lights (it's still there)

The Brotherhood disbanded as the year ended and our schedules all changed for the fall. The library ended up revoking most of its rules the following year, not that the Brotherhood had anything to do with that, I was actually kind of disappointed that no one else would have such an exciting experience in there as I did.

In the end, everything we did was out of fun. No one was hurt or offended, we all got some good laughs and memories, I kicked Nick's ass at chess...

The Brotherhood taught me how to loosen up and have fun within any container you're given. We could have blatantly ignored the rules and been completely obnoxious about it (and we would have been banned entirely) but we still respected the librarians and that they were just doing their jobs, there was nothing harmful or hateful about it. It was just about having fun, keeping each other from getting bored as the year went on. I still tell our story to people, and I'll probably tell it to my kids one day. How we created a silly club in high school just to break the rules in the library, all in the name of fun.

Things I'm Stealing from The Brotherhood:
It can always be fun
Containers are limitless
A container does not contain as much as you think it does
Do things together! It's more fun that way
High school was really a happy time