Flatbush has gone soft

By Belle Shatzkes

Entertainment Editor

When you trudge into school at 7:39 AM, you’re most likely thinking, Ugh, it’s too early to be up. When you go to Crawford’s and realize they raised their prices again, you sigh and buy your cookie anyway. When you try to make your way through the Commons between second and third period trying to get to class, you complain to your friend about how crowded it is.

Imagine, for a second, that you enter Flatbush in a different dimension. You walk into the building from the main entrance at 7 in the morning, scan your fingerprint and get annoyed that you chose to give them your thumb and not your pointer finger, and walk past the ginormous copy machine in the middle of the lobby to the staircase that marks the end of the Yeshivah of Flatbush building. That’s right; no Commons, no Crawford’s, no fancy library, no Sephardic Beit Midrash. In fact, the Ashkenaz Beit Midrash is called just the Beit Midrash! And, as an added bonus, the old college guidance offices don’t exist—they’re an extension of the Beit Midrash.

During your free period, you run down to the lounge in the sub-basement to check who else has no class, dash to your locker to grab your bathing suit because you have Gym class in the pool next period, then have lunch in the gym. Your day continues with classes that last 42 minutes. During mincha in the auditorium (which has red seats), you take your snack out of your backpack because that’s the only place you can get a snack. You end your day at 5:30, thanking Hashem that you have only a little bit of homework—your Hebrew teacher assigned you a book to read, and that’s it.

I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds horrible. I would say, thank G-d it’s Flatbush in another dimension! But that’s just Flatbush ten years ago.