Rip Van Winkle: An Andover Story

There was an Andover student named Rip, a particularly lazy Andover student. He had already declared to himself that schoolwork was already of no use to him, for he thought it was one of the most “pestilent” tasks know to man. He was a ragged mess, and he was content with this. You know what they say, working hands are the Devil’s workshop, right? The Den was his was where he dwelled most of his time.

But, one day, he wandered into the library for the first time because he decided that he might try to write his dreaded English paper. He wondered to himself, “I didn’t even know we had such a building, but better yet, who in their right mind would spend their time here?” To him, it had a stench of tears and misery. But he had no experience with those emotions because he had never done any work. In silent, he fell asleep, taking a nap atop one of the tables.

But when he awoke, something seemed off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. As he escaped the library, he realized that he did not recognize any face. He voyaged through his familiar pits of Phillips Academy, but found no one he knew. He came across a portrait where the beloved face of John Palfrey once hung. But, it had been replaced with an unfamiliar one. What could have happened to the OG head of school? Suddenly PAPS spotted him and thought there was an intruder and tried to arrest him. Oh wait, they can’t do that they have job descriptions similar to mall cops. So they did what they could do is drag him to the feared Cluster Dean. Luckily for him, one of his old classmates who had become a teaching fellow recognized him. He suddenly realized that he had slept for ten whole years. Instead of being distressed, he was happy that he didn’t have to turn his English essay in, and though “Hey, I should do this more often.” And he lived in his blissful laziness, slumbering through eternity.