Ever get the feeling that sometimes these hallways just ain’t big enough for the two of us? Or even more to scale, perhaps the 3,000 of us? Every day is a constant battle of perceived hallway etiquette because we’re all preoccupied by who’s right, who’s wrong, and who’s very, very late.

In other words, there are groups of four and five students walking in a line down a hallway that is only about four or five students wide because they’re trying to find any truth in today’s latest rumors. The great news here is that you’re all walking so wide and so slow that everyone three students deep is up to date on what happened to Jimmy after he was run over in North Penn’s parking lot. The bad news is that their line of gossip is amorphous, and with every corner turned, it’s bound to pick up new people while discarding the old ones, which means the rest of us are being cut off and blocked out by twelve different people at any given time. (But they prefer to morph when you least expect it.)

Next to the haphazardly horizontal rehashers are the academically inclined clusters stressing over just whether the answer to that bio test was ‘A’ or ‘C.’ (You’re all wrong because the answer is always ‘B’ whenever you’re unsure.) This group of students walks slowly as well, usually with their noses stuffed into vocabulary books as if smelling the ink will help them channel the root of all high school animosity, Jerome Shostak. But at least these clusters walk, because falling into the same category are the academically uninclined who stand preferably by the bathrooms on the corners of every pod. They are just one handshake and/or confrontation away from taking up the entire hallway.

And to clarify on just who is very, very late, the answer is all of us, North Penn. There’s just no getting around it, literally and physically. But that’s the purpose of this article: to propose the reformation of high school hallway traffic. We will achieve punctuality yet!

If I’m going to be taken literally so that students are the equivalent of traffic, traffic lights ought to be installed primarily in E-pod and F-pod. Those who claim they’ve never heard of the E-pod Clog should be expelled immediately because they are clearly lying. That’s also one less body to push against. Multiply highway traffic ramps should flank both of these pods for stress free entries and departures to act as a drain and result in timely arrivals.

But I can see where such a radical change to the school’s infrastructure might be more on the expensive side when there are more important things to consider like carpeting. An increase of time between classes should do the trick. Here’s what’s feasible in four minutes: unsubscribing from college emails, repeating words so that they lose meaning, and getting from downstairs E-pod to upstairs E-pod (barely). Here’s what’s not feasible in four minutes: holding your breath, not thinking about penguins (because now I put it in your head,) and making it on time to just about anywhere else in the school. If students had, say, six minutes to make it class, ninth period may suffer, but there would be fewer detentions for tardiness because the kids who were stuck behind the masses had just enough time to plot their escape.

Or we can look to Yiddish folk tales for some inspiration. There once was this man who was so fed up by his crowded house that he sought help. He was told to fill his house with barn animals until everything went from bad to worse. But once he got rid of the animals, suddenly his old situation became much more tolerable. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting we fill the halls of North Penn with farm animals – although the Knight Riders might be able to lend us a few horses. I’m suggesting a field trip back to our roots: elementary school. The hallways there are so small even the toughest among us would be itching with claustrophobia. Once we spend a couple hours packed like sardines, North Penn is likely to seem as free as the open sky, though I admit that this would only be a short term option.

A more long term method could start on Sophomore Orientation Day. Rather than guide the newbies around the places with the most foot traffic, let’s show them the stairwell in the back of A-pod, or the one at the far end of second floor K-pod. Teach them how H-pod is connected to A-pod and E-pod via the courtyard. The fresh air will do everyone some good, and now there’s no worry of a spontaneous student kidnapping or Russian invasion thanks to the installation of the Iron Burton.  In BTH we trust.

At the very least North Penn, we can attempt to be a little more self-aware in the hallways. We all have places to be and people to see, so there’s no need to push or shove. Let’s encourage fast walking and lunchtime gossiping and at-home studying. Eventually we’ll all make it on time, but as of right now, I still wouldn’t hold my breath (especially for four minutes or longer).