couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name:

Okay, if anyone is going to read this story, you are legally required to listen to the song “Turbulence” first. Nothing will truly make sense without it. You sit your ass through the entire damn song, if you try to skimp out on it the Elder’s will find you. It’s completely vital to the full experience of this stupid ass story. This ENTIRE story exasperates me

Now, okay, so my high school senior class….was relatively a group of good kids. It was a larger grade then I was used to growing up, so I obviously didn’t know everyone in the school personally, but I could pretty much recognize everyone in my grade, and like okay, there were a lot of class clowns and trouble makers™, but for the most part, no one was really a dick and everyone was generally a Decent Person.

Then, for some ungodly reason, the song ‘turbulence’ gets released. 

Now, I think the song actually came out in like, 2011 or something, but it caused Notable Problems with my grade in particular. It was deemed our ‘CLASS SONG’, and every time it played at an event or someone just played it for fun on their phone or something, every single kid in my age group just unexplainably went crazy. You never really knew what was going to happen, and it got worse each and every year- making senior year the year of Worried Faculty, and not without reason. 

Senior Year alone, before this Disney incident happened, the song ‘turbulence’ lead directly to the slightly-violent concussion of an unwillingly crowd surfing teacher and a few freshmen at homecoming, and it was also being blasted on a blue tooth speaker when a couple of boys in my class Lowkey Very Politely High-Jacked The Plane We Were On, so, when we got to Disney World, the chaperones made sure to contact whoever was in charge of our party and told them under no circumstances was this song to be played.

Anyway.

So the school does a Disney trip for the seniors every year- they stay in a cheap hotel and shove four or five withering and hormonal teens in a room, they go to the parks during the day, one night they walk through Universal and see the Blue Man Group in concert, and one night they usually have a big dinner and dance party for the kids, usually held in Sea World. 

But, you know what came out when they were planning the Disney trip? Blackfish. So, the school board (and a lot of the students) were like “UMM-” and that left them scrambling to find a new location for the party. 

The Disney workers, being Disney workers, were super helpful when the school mentioned this issue when they called to make reservations, though. They were like, “Oh, this is great timing! Your school always brings such well-behaved kids every year, and we’ve been thinking about opening up our Fantasia Gardens golf course as a party location! You guys could be our first official party!” and the school was super flattered so they agreed. Disney was providing a dance floor, food, a DJ, and everything else, and it wasn’t going to really cost anything extra, so the faculty was like, Super Excited about it. They thought this was gonna be a great thing, they were the experiment to see if they would try this with other schools, it was an honor, and it meant that they had a great reputation in Disney’s opinion, so maybe they’d be open to providing the school with free/new stuff/opportunities in future years.

Now, let me tell you something- I was Kinda Fucking Miserable for most of this trip. The first day was fine, but the second day saw my friends abandoning me in Magic Kingdom with barely any explanation, so I spent all day roaming MK and Epicot alone, save for occasionally standing next to acquaintances and talking to my different-school friends in a group chat on my phone, and then later that night my friend since third grade like, got a school official and cried to her about how I had instigated a fight and that’s why I was alone all day, which is literally such bullshit and not what happened, it‘s been 3 years and I still cannot believe she actually pulled this fuckery, so even though we made up later in the week I was still pissed the fuck off for the rest of my life the trip. All of my roommates (the deserters) were walking on eggshells around me, except this one control-freak girl who tried to micromanage everything I did (even though literally none of it affected her)  and none of us realized how pissed off I was until I apparently physically threw her out of the bed while I was in a deep sleep, multiple times, and also stole her pillow. So the only person who I wasn’t Fully Done with was this tiny girl from a writing class, but she was potentially Half-Hamster, exclusively wore clothes made for seven year olds, couldn’t go on half of the rides because of her glass eye, and 99% of her conversation points was talking about all the plans she had to hang out with one of the other girls I was rooming with (who didn’t actually wanna hang out with her/got mad at me the third day there because the boy she liked was flirting with me), so like…she was sweet but I also wanna go on rides and not hear how great the girls I’m lowkey in a Blood Feud with are, you know? She wasn’t exactly prime hang out material here. So by the time we get to this party at Fantasia Gardens, we’re all lowkey pretending like everything’s fine but like. It wasn’t hard to tell there was fighting going on. And you could just look at all the other students around you and see there was also fighting going on. Shoving so many kids in hot rooms is never a good idea, like YIKE. 

Anyway, I needed something at this party to be fun. I needed to be released at this point. 

I walk into the place and immediately realize I’m a fucking outlier amongst the girls- every single girl had opted for a sundress, whilst I thought a black skirt and a nice blouse would be enough. This should not have been a problem, but hey. High School. What can ya do. (it just made me more stressed) At this point I was like, this is it, this is it, I hate literally everyone in my high school. There’s nothing holding me back. Graduation take me the fuck away. But I had to make it through this party and then one more day in Disney. 

The room was like, a barn, kind off? Or at the very least it had been decorated like one. There was barbecue food, a dance floor, a lake outside, and a mini-golf course that we were told we were allowed to use at any part of the night. The DJ was playing relatively normal dance/club music. After about an hour of strobe lights and watching people dancing, My Friend Who Hath Betrayed Me and I decided to head down to the mini-golf course. 

There were these two guys there, and I didn’t really know them but they were clearly those ‘All Our Classmates Are Beneath Us Because We’re Alternative And Like Anime And Heavy Metal Music’ types of guys. They took one look at my ass in a tight black mini-skirt and immediately started flirting with me, and on any other occasion I would have shot them down, but 1) They were both actively focused on me over my friend, who I was still mad at and 2) I was frustrated – so I started flirting back even though I wasn’t interested in the slightest (and I had petty reasoning, of course, but I was 18, it was a bad week, it was 100 degrees, give me a break. I promise 99% of the time I’m not Awful). So anyway, we get caught up in a game of mini-golf with these anti-establishment boys, who spend the entire time dissing our classmates for, like, dancing, and looking for excuses to show off in front of me/touch me. We missed like half the dance because of this. 

Right when we were finishing our game, we were contemplating going to the other golf course (I was looking for an excuse to head back to the party tbh we were literally the only four people outside it was starting to feel like the set up to a horror movie) when a girl came up and told us to head back in because the boys™ had busted out the alcohol and we only had a limited amount of time before the chaperones noticed. 

(They sold alcohol at our hotel, a bunch of people had fake id’s made before the trip for this very reason). Me and my friend didn’t actually feel like drinking but we took the excuse and the boys followed us back inside (we lost them on the dance floor and I only saw them once again that night). Anyway, we arrived to what we thought was Chaos, but was truly only the Beginning of Chaos. 

Right off the bat, I noticed the boys from my Gov class and the boys I knew from detention were huddled around each other, muttering under the music. That, I knew, was not gonna lead to anything good. They see me, and they’re like “Javert! Javert people trust you! Go request that the DJ play turbulence!” and I’m like. No. What are you fucking planning??? But they just keep pressing me. They would not drop it oh my God. One of my roommates overhears this, the one who’s mad at me because her crush she never talks to was slightly flirting with me earlier, and she’s in a petty™ mood so she asks why they want it to play but they still won’t tell her, just keep insisting that it has to happening. So she’s all, ‘I can get it to play’ and struts off to the DJ booth with an exaggerated ponytail snap. I’m left with these boys like. For fucks sake please don’t get anyone killed. 

A few boys break off to go tap people and let them know what’s going on. The smell of alcohol is strong. Boys are starting to discreetly take off their shoes and any valuables and hide them under the tables. The chaperones aren‘t noticing any of this. 

I broke away from the dance floor to get a soda, and one of the teachers sees me looking mildly distressed and asks if something’s wrong. And I know. I know that I have the power to kill whatever the hell is about to happen. I’m the sole person in this room that’s clued in who’s not whispering in excitement and waiting for the song to play. I still don’t even know what they’re all planning on doing, but I could end this so fast, just say the words ‘turbulence’ or ‘the boys’ or ‘senior prank’, and this would be nipped in the bud immediately. This could be over before it ever started, all because of me.

And then I reflect on how shitty my weeks been going, how I was frustrated with most of the people in the room, how I needed something fun to happen at this party to release me from hell. 

I tell the chaperone I’m fine, just getting a little tired, and they drop it and head back to the buffet line. 

I head back to the dance floor. Everyone is grinding with baited breath. 

The DJ’s voice comes over the microphone: “I hear it’s someone’s birthday tomorrow! Let’s play her favorite song!”

Turbulence begins to play.

The class goes wild, wilder than they’ve ever been before. The building may as well be shaking from all the noise and music. 

The teachers are trying to get the DJ’s attention to cut the song. He can’t hear them. 

The bass drops. 

Almost every boy on the dance floor screams, runs outside, rips off their shirts and jumps into the fucking lake. 

It was absolute PANDEMONIUM. This wasn’t even the funniest thing they could have come up with but everyone left on the dance floor was loosing their minds cracking up. The teachers and Disney workers were screaming at the top of their lungs and trying to haul boys back onto the land. 

Then the manager of Fantasia Gardens starts screaming that there are alligators in the fucking lake. 

Like. FUCKING. IT’S FLORIDA. HOW DID NO ONE THINK THERE WAS GONNA BE AN ALLIGATOR PROBLEM. F L O R I D A. 

THESE DUMBASS BOYS JUMPED INTO A FUCKING ALLIGATOR INFESTED LAKE.

A L L I G A T O R S. 

FUCK.

All the boys eventually make it back onto land- no one had been bitten or killed or anything, although a few apparently did see ‘shapes moving’ (it was late at night, so nothing clear), and one kid got kicked in the head and knocked out for a few moments and almost drowned, but everyone was intact. 

DISNEY WORLD WAS FURIOUS. 

And like, you can’t fucking blame them. I’m sure when they were making the principal sign liability papers, they didn’t think to include ‘late night gator attacks in a lake’ on the list, they could’ve been put in serious trouble if something had happened omfg. But there was a LOT of yelling/ranting/cursing. NEVER before have they seen such inappropriate behavior, the school would not be allowed to step foot in the Fantasia Gardens EVER again, yadayada, that sort of thing. The more boys I found soaking wet, the more ridiculous this got- I knew which of them had planned it of course, but this was most of the grade. There were like, geeks and nerds and Good Kids™ who I never expected to do something like wild like this standing around half naked looking torn between proud and about-to-cry omfg.

Every single boy who participated got suspended for three days, but they had to space out which boys were suspended which days because they didn’t trust them to not throw a giant party on the days they weren’t there. 

The school is still allowed in Disney World every year, but are banned from Fantasia Gardens and received a fine. 

‘Turbulence’ was absolutely banned from being played at senior prom.