“Na-na-nah-boo-boo, you can’t catch me!” Was heard throughout the halls of the old Francis Howell North building on more than one occasion. My little brother and I would run all around the cafeteria while the cool high schoolers had their banquets and awards.

“Ohhhh, your last name matches that one teacher!” Is what I hear near the beginning of every school year. Some people figure it out on the first day of school and others don’t notice until a few weeks in, but, nonetheless, it has persisted through all four years of high school.

“I remember how little you were when you were four!” Is what I hear at least once a week, now that I’m in my final year of high school. Most of the teachers and faculty at this school were teaching when I would visit the building, but some were still students. If you weren’t aware of this yet, I’m a teacher’s kid. A high school teacher’s no less.

Being a teacher’s kid has its benefits. People immediately assume I’m trustworthy and awesome (which I am) because I have a parent in the building with me. I get a classroom to hide in whenever I need a break or have a free hour. I’ve been in the new building since the first day teachers were allowed in, and the old one before most of the people in my class.

My parents had some of the students babysit me and my little brother. Now when I see them coming back to visit the new building or out working at the library, I’m towering over them, trying to remember if they’re the one I made sunflower stew with or the one who played the Sugar Plum Fairy on Main Street during the holiday season.

The one thing that sucks the most about being a teacher’s kid, I grew up in that old building. I was there back when the journalism room was in room 026, a dark little corner in the basement between janky elevator number one and the faculty bathrooms that every student used at some point. I was in the loft area in the cafeteria, reserved for seniors, before I knew what high school was.

Yes, there were issues from burst water pipes, to random fire alarms that lead to hour-long evacuation in sub-freezing temperatures. But there were also tons of memories that I, and so many other students, made there.

That said, I am not upset in the slightest about how new and nice and clean our current building is. I do not ever intend to miss the building itself, nor the headaches and sickness that would descend upon the population when the heaters kicked on in the winter. But it wasn’t all that bad. I only get one year in this new building, and I probably won’t miss it as much as I miss the old building, my friends or my teachers. But the biggest thing I’ll miss from all of this? Probably the free snacks in my dad’s room whenever I get hungry.