Valentine’s Day 2022, a new Raider spread their wings………. I arrived here to Leonardtown from Lackey about a little more than a year ago, and while I spend my time here enjoying the environment, opportunities, people and teachers, in my own time, I can’t help but frequently think of what the old Indian Head bois are up to and what could have changed about Lackey over my absence. 

In just a year of being gone from Charles County, my old middle school, Matthew Henson completely renovated the exterior of the building to be repaneled across the entire face.

And while my family was still there, but I was in Lackey and my little brother was going to Henson, they had moved the entire main office, repaved and reconfigured the parking lot, and livened the landscape with some new plants and trees. 

I could only imagine what could have happened to Lackey within the time I’ve been gone, until opportunity presented itself to me, with the fact of a history book I needed to return lingering within my bedroom. 

Last week, I had finally asked my mom if I could go back to Lackey on Thursday and drop off the book and also just look around the school, and she agreed. 

But a commitment for the family came up last minute and I had to go Friday.

And then on Friday, when I got there, it was right at the time that all the students we’re leaving for the day at 2:15, (I know, be jealous, a half-hour earlier release than us, but they do have to be at school earlier too for it) the whole school to me, the staff & spring athletes. 

I came in through a nearby side door that serves as the entrance to the school pool (be jealous again) and walked from that door to the guidance office. There, I greeted a lady who was actually one of the last people I talked to at Lackey before the move to Leonardtown, because she handled student info, including info important for me to get from Lackey to Leonardtown-and more broadly Charles to St. Mary’s counties- and then somebody else came by and took me through the guidance hallway, past all of the counselors, including my own previous counselor.

From the guidance hallway, we came through a door that connected the block of guidance offices to the main office, where the secretaries told me that I could leave the book with them with a note for the teacher that I had the book and was returning it, and then told me to leave through the front door, which is also connected to the main office.

Felt as though I got kind of stuffed on not being able to look back around at much in my old school except for some of the Phys Ed. stuff, the cafeteria and one side of the courtyard, which is all along the way to the guidance office from the pool doors, but there’s definitely something to be said for everybody trying to split for spring break over there, as we were here in L-Town, and not really trying to deal with this goofy journalist guy from dozens of miles away that probably should’ve brought this one book back waaaay sooner than a year later from leaving the school and then soon vanishing to who knows where for college. 

But still, in my opinion, Leonardtown lifts Lackey’s soul in an overwhelming amount of ways, and I do genuinely find this a much cooler place to be, extra-half hour-of-my-afternoon-spent-in-school-and-lack-of-school-pool-withstanding. 

And that’s the whole story of my very brief, triumphant return to Lackey.