School portraits / Campus residents · accounts from 2025 and 2026
The Art of Carrying Goldfish
A sensible tote meets an unhurried resident on the Greenhill tour.
Suppose you visit Greenhill with a zip bag of Goldfish tucked where a sensible parent keeps one: within reach but out of sight. The campus is handsome and the tour is already moving. Your plan is holding nicely until a peacock steps into the path and pauses, as if checking whether the plan includes him. You smile in a welcoming-tour way and quietly recalculate the distance to your tote.
Caretaker Toby Row says the males each keep to their own territories, though they sometimes head toward the Lower School, where younger students may drop Goldfish or granola bars. Which makes your carefully zipped bag feel suddenly less discreet and faintly like an announcement.
You try to look like someone with nothing worth following, hitching the tote a little higher. The bird drifts nearer on a path of its own that happens to run roughly parallel to yours. It studies everything except you with great commitment. You admire this, since you are studying everything except the Goldfish with about the same success.
English teacher Tom Perryman jokes about how much the school spends on power washing. You believe him. You are now watching the sidewalk as carefully as the tote.
Freshman Anabelle Olvera noticed a single white feather on one of the campus peacocks and built a monochrome bookmark design around it. It won the Upper School's 75th-anniversary contest. You have spent half a tour watching for crumbs and footprints. She was looking at the feathers.
You shift the tote to the other shoulder, give the sidewalk one last check, and glance once more at the bird before the group rounds the corner. You follow, holding the bag a little higher, still sealed, still yours.