A School Water Fight

It was the last day of school before the summer break, the sun was beating down making the heat almost unbearable. The classroom was so hot that I could feel the sweat forming on my back, as I was walking back into the school. As I walked into the classroom, it was filled with excited students as we had just spent the morning cleaning everything out to be taken home. We could not wait for this afternoon to start as our two classes were joining together to have a water fight for the rest of the day behind the school. Everyone was talking about the water guns they had brought to use in the water fight. I could even hear some of the boys taking about how they were going to gang up on us girls. My best friend and I started talking about which one of our guy friends we were going to go after first, or how we were going to get away from the boys soaking us.

            “All right guys are you ready to get this water fight going?!” our teacher said walking in holding packages of water balloons, dressed in the most ridiculous outfit with water wings and a lifejacket to give us a laugh. Both of our classrooms empty as we headed to our crammed lockers to grab our bags. The hallway was filled with slamming and bangs as students’ lockers closed, and books and binders fell to the ground as they tried to pull their stuff out. “Go out the gym doors and meet us out back” we could hear out teachers yelling after us as we headed down the hall to the change rooms. All of us girls crammed in trying to find a space to change into our bathing suits. 

            As most of us girls made our way outside, we could see the boys ahead of us all in their swim trunks without a shirt on helping the teachers fill up the water balloons and buckets to fill our water guns in. We put our bags off to the side where they boys had already made a pile. Most of us were wearing our bikinis or tankinis, just like we had when we went school swimming, but as we walked up, we could see our teachers giving us girls a little bit of a look. They began to step away from the group and have a private discussion. The girls joined in to getting everything ready. The teachers then walked back, and told to boys to take all the buckets and toys out to the middle of the field and wait for everyone else patiently. I could tell something was wrong, but I could not tell what it was. 

The teachers began to ask us all if we all had an extra shirt within our bags. A couple others and I had brought a spare one, but some of the girls explained how they only had the one that they were wearing. The teachers then proceeded to tell us that it did not matter, and we all needed to go put our shirts back on. One of the girls asked why we had too, “we were all just wearing bathing suits, what was wrong with that?” They then proceeded to tell us that what we were wearing we could not be wearing at school, because it was inappropriate. Another girl had asked, why we had to put on shirts when all of the boys were shirtless? More of us started to get aggravated. I wondered why it was alright for us to wear these bathing suits school swimming, but not now. We were quickly shot down and told that we either go put on shirts, or we were going back inside and not take part in the activity. I was shocked as we all walked back to our bags to put on a shirt. I could not believe that some of these girls were going to be forced to get their only shirt they have for the rest of the day wet. This was the moment I realized that just because of my gender I was going to be told that things I wore were going to be inappropriate or distracting for the rest of my life.